Yesterday, President Obama met with Senators at the White House and pushed them to pass comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation. Still, the skeptics are spinning a monotonous web of negativity regarding what is achievable on this front. And, not surprisingly, the "mainstream media" once again has been asleep at the wheel in setting the record straight. Fortunately, we know that when this President rolls up his sleeves, he gets stuff done and delivers on his promises. One thing’s for sure; President Obama is anything but an underachiever!
Along these lines, President Obama held a press conference following the G-20 summit in Toronto. In response to a reporter’s question regarding how he would achieve his deficit reduction goals, the president responded:
For some reason people keep being surprised when I do what I said I was going to do. So, I say I’m going to reform our [health care system], and people say well gosh that’s not smart politics maybe we should hold off. Or I say we’re going to move forward on [Don’t Ask Don’t Tell] and somehow people say well why are you doing that, I’m not sure that’s good politics. I’m doing it because I said I was going to do it, and I think it’s the right thing to do. And people should learn that lesson about me, because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficit and debt step up cause I’m calling their bluff.
To that list of accomplishments, we could also add:
Creating or saving 2.2-2.8 million jobs, well on the way to Obama’s February 2009 pledge that he would "create or save 3-and-a-half million jobs over the next two years."
Reforming Wall Street (likely to pass Congress any day now)
Overhauling the student loan market
Reaching a nuclear arms treaty with Russia
We could go on and on, but you get the point: anyone who continues, at this point, to be "surprised" when President Obama gets things done when he puts his mind to it is deep in denial. Or, as a previous president might have put it, they are wildly "misunderestimating" our 44th president.
Clearly, as we’ve seen over the past two years, underachieving is not a problem Barack Obama suffers from. Of course, even a superachiever like Barack Obama has an awful lot on his plate to deal with. And right now, one of the most important things on Obama’s plate is figuring out how to push comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation through the U.S. Senate. Along those lines, yesterday, Obama met with a group of Senators on this issue, reportedly holding firm in his call for putting a price on carbon emissions.
The question at this point is, will President Obama roll up his sleeves and deliver on another of his major campaign promise (as well as a major challenge facing our nation)? Given the long list of accomplishments mentioned above, it certainly wouldn’t be smart to bet against him. The fact is, Barack Obama usually succeeds in whatever he puts his mind to.
Given the nation’s increased focus on energy and climate issues – and the increased support by the American people for taking strong action as a result of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster – now is clearly the time for boldness and for bluff calling by our nation’s leaders. Today, President Obama has the opportunity to demonstrate once more that, when he rolls up his sleeves, he accomplishes what he says he’s going to do. In sum, today is clearly the moment for President Obama to prove the doubters and naysayers wrong – to call their bluff - yet again!
As President Obama prepares for his meeting tomorrow with Senators at the White House to discuss clean energy and climate change legislation, he might want to check with the White House staff on an important matter first. No, not the details of the legislation, although that’s important of course. Instead, what President Obama might want to make absolutely sure about is the non-trivial matter of whether the White House air conditioning is in tip-top shape. I say "non-trivial," but these days it’s more like "life or death." How hot is it in the Washington, DC area? As NBC Washington puts it, "We're Talking Spontaneous Combustion." (UPDATE: it's more likely this is apocryphal than literally true, but it sure feels like plants could catch on fire these days in Washington, DC!)
How hot is it? It's so hot that dead plants are spontaneously combusting in Frederick, Md.
Don't believe it? Just ask Frederick County Fire Marshal Marc McNeal, who told the Frederick News-Post that excessive heat caused a dead plant to catch fire Sunday afternoon in a hanging planter on the rear deck of a townhouse.
The hanging basket fell to the deck and burned some vinyl siding, causing about $3,000 in damages.
It has definitely been hot in the Washington region. Monday will be the 10th day in a row that we've reached 90 degrees or higher, and this will be the 17th day of the month that the thermometer has reached 90.
NBC4 meteorologist Tom Kierein said that when it's all said and done, June 2010 likely will be the hottest June on record in the District.
Dead plants catching on fire in the hottest June on record in the Washington, DC area? Sadly, this may not be an aberration, but a frightening sign of things to come in a global warming world. True, we shouldn’t draw broad conclusions about the earth’s climate from one heat wave in one specific geographic area, as certain climate change deniers dishonestly did during last winter’s "snowpocalypse" blizzards. However, when we see month after month, decade after decade of record-setting heat globally, it starts to get a bit hard to ignore.
In fact, climate scientists are not ignoring these heat waves and other phenomena. Earlier today, for instance, The Project on Climate Science reported that the "record-breaking heat wave" we are currently experiencing in the eastern United States "is consistent with climate change." According to Tom Peterson, Chief Scientist for NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, "We’re getting a dramatic taste of the kind of weather we are on course to bequeath to our grandchildren." Of course, as The Project on Climate Science points out, "individual heat waves can be driven by a number of factors." However, they conclude, "more frequent heat waves are one of the more visible impacts of climate change already underway in the United States" and "will occur more frequently in the future."
In sum, if you enjoy record-setting warmth – not to mention the stronger storms, mass extinctions and "record sea ice shrinkage" in the Arctic that go along with that warmth – you have a lot to look forward to! If not, then you should contact your Senator and let him or her know you want climate action now.
Come to think of it, perhaps we should all hope for the White House air conditioning to be broken tomorrow – or turned off on purpose - so that the Senators meeting there get a taste of what the planet will feel like everywhere if they don’t do something about it now. When you think about it, a bit of Senatorial sweat and a few stained shirts is not too high a price to pay if it results in long-overdue, comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation on the President’s desk sometime this sweltering summer. Is it?
Two interesting and potentially game-changing happenings went down yesterday, both of which would seem to be positives for the drive to see a full and robust public option (FRPO) included in any health care reform bill that passes Congress. Plus I've got news of a demonstration in Portland that goes even beyond that, and continues to press for action on a single-payer plan.
First, the President made front page news in The Oregonian this morning, by commenting at some length on the health care bill being carried by Senator Ron Wyden. Obama was as usual polite and mostly glancing in his criticisms, but he was indeed critical of the plan:
"There are a lot of good concepts to what Ron's proposing," Obama said. But despite his professed agreement with "90 percent" of Wyden's thinking, he said parts of the plan are too "radical" for the country.
Wyden argues that linking health care costs to individuals will promote competition and drive down costs. But Obama said that is too sharp a departure from what workers have known -- and become comfortable with -- for generations.
That fundamental shift, along with the major changes in the tax code that Wyden proposes, are too "radical," Obama said, when aligned with all the other changes that must take place to provide health insurance to 47 million Americans who don't have it.
The president said his discussions with Wyden are similar to those with people who advocate a single-payer system. In theory, those plans work, he said. "The problem is, we have evolved partly by accident into an employer-based system."
A "radical restructuring" would meet "significant political resistance," Obama said, and "families who are currently relatively satisfied with their insurance but are worried about rising costs ... would get real nervous about a wholesale change."
No, it's not a typo. As the health care debate quickly becomes a core schism between tweaking the current private insurance scheme and establishing a robust public option to compete against it, not only are the President and Oregon's senior Senator currently holding opposite ground on the matter, both are beginning to harden their rhetoric and dig in their heels. What's even more surprising is that Senator Wyden is slowly emerging as the standard bearer of REPUBLICAN opposition to a public option, gathering supporters for (or allowing them to hide behind) his significant but ultimately nontransformational proposal for reform.
Think I'm making that up? Read what The Hill wrote three weeks ago on the subject, in an article I missed at the time but which retroactively adds a lot of weight to the current analysis:
And while Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Max Baucus (Mont.) may chair the committees charged with shepherding the bill through the Senate, Wyden, a 6-foot-4 former college basketball player, has his own advantage: a standing invitation to play hoops with the president at the White House, which may come in handy when hashing out the final details behind the scenes.
For Wyden, the key to passing lasting healthcare reform is finding a legislative solution that can win at least 70 votes in the Senate — and he’s not shy about letting Democrats know that means dropping thoughts of a government-run public plan for the entire nation.
OK, let's back up a moment and establish the fault lines in the discussion, below the fold... {come on down!}
A reader reminded me that there is now polling out on our new President and Senator in Oregon to go with regular updates on our current Upper Houser and Goobernor. I'm glad he reminded me, because they've been out for almost three weeks now--and while I'm not denying any existed, I sure can't find any mention of the results as published by Survey USA on March 27th.
Regular LO readers will recognize the formats; they're the same questions repeated generally every month for the Governor and Senate offices in the state, as well as the President. They're not very good for embedding, because the crosstabs are long and the simple pie chart is not interesting. But I'll link them, and you can peruse them to your heart's content.
We'll start with President Obama, who won handily with 57% of the vote in Oregon, not shabby but not among his best states, either (Washington gave him 58% for instance). We'll call his support solid, at least in late March: he currently has a 62% job approval rating, with just 31% dissenting. Two thirds of women approve, as do two thirds of young voters.
Even Republicans in Oregon are relatively hip to Obama; he has a 30% approval rating with self-identified GOPers. Indies are favorable at 56%, but are notably warier than Democrats. Liberals in particular are ga-ga, 97% approve. (As a fairly left liberal I'd have to say boiled into a single answer I'd respond with "approve" as well, but I feel definite sympathy with the 2%--especially on the handling of Wall Street and Bush torture.) Moderates approve at a 65% clip, and his appeal is essentially the same whether you answered in Portland or anywhere else in the state.
So the honeymoon's still on in Oregon for BO; he won the state easily and has retained some new admirers it seems. In the face of a severe state recession it will be interesting to see how long that approval lasts at 60%+ levels.
The Oregonian is reporting that Senator Ron Wyden (D) is a candidate to be the next HHS Secretary. I'll discuss the rumors, who Wyden is and what this would mean for the US Senate if he were to be nominated.
Now THIS is interesting, and if it played out as described, it says some important between-the-lines things about where President-elect Obama stands on the intelligence community's legacy from the horror known as the Bush years--and who he trusts (and by exlusion does NOT trust) to help him put his own stamp on things. From TPM, regarding the apparent selection of Leon Panetta for Chief of the CIA:
Just spoke to Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-OR) office, where a spokeswoman confirmed what was hinted at this morning: Wyden had been in contact with the Obama transition team to discuss the Leon Panetta nomination, while incoming Senate intelligence chairman Dianne Feinstein was still in the dark.
We checked in with Wyden because Bloomberg's report described him as "being consulted" on the choice -- whether he was consulted by the Obama camp or by Panetta, a former ally of Wyden's from their days in the House, remained unclear.
There are a couple of things to ponder here, in a story also making the rounds at Daily Kos for what it says about our outgoing and incoming Senate Intelligence Chairs, Jay Rockefeller and Diane Feinstein, respectively. Both Senators have earned a reputation for sins ranging from easy capitulation to President Bush, to outright approval and support for some of his executive encroachments on both their legislative perogative and our own civil rights. And both have been publically critical of Obama's choice, instead pushing candidates who would still have the stink of torture and illegal surveillance upon them.
Not only is Panetta's choice a direct rebuke to the idea that a career spook is best for the CIA job, but it's a stick in the eye to folks like Feinstein, who want that kind of person in the job, and in the past approved ne'er do well pros like Michael Mukasey (albeit perhaps in an endless attempt to keep Democratic powder perpetually dry.) Panetta has quite recently gone on record about how fundamentally inconsistent it is with American principes for the US to even hint at supporting torture, which--if Feinstein had enough moral fiber--should make her squeam about her own past choices in the matter.
So Obama seems to be telegraphing pretty hard that in his CIA, while there may not necessarily be a post-facto investigative housecleaning of the old guard, the new boss sure ain't going to be the same as the old boss. What else was he telegraphing? That he knows he's not going to get help from DiFi on making a clean break from the ugly past, so he needs to cultivate other respected Senators for their advice and support in the matter.
That he has chosen Ron Wyden as one of those people is a very good sign indeed. Wyden, while like every other Democrat not fully beyond reproach on torture and spying, has been one of the more vocal opponents to the Bush intel regime, and would clearly be a strong ally to the President in cleaning things up.
Are DiFi and/or Rockefeller really going to go to the mattresses to preserve the culture of torture and illegal spying at CIA? Doubtful. Their objections here are likely much less on the substance of the pick (although they may well have a legitimate disagreement on whether the Chief should be an agency insider), and more focused on the fact that they weren't consulted or notified beforehand. One would have to almost go out of their way to put the Intel Chair out of the loop on something like this...which it seems Obama did!
Joe Biden's left to do some of the fence-mending, as he does here. But it seems like a hollow apology, one that admits a "mistake" while simultaneously reaffirming Panetta as a good choice. In other words, the public apology is doubling as a bit of private advice: sorry, but your bitching and moaning isn't going to change anything. And secondarily, just because Feinstein is the new Chair, does not mean she--or the rest of the Pillowsoft Brigade--has the ear of the President when it comes to surveillance and torture. There may be other new, Oregonian deputies riding shotgun with this President!
I have to say I'm of several mixed feelings regarding Barack Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his Inaugural. The side of me that's horrified by the pasasge of Prop 8 and revulsed by people who support it, is highly disappointed and disgusted that Obama seems not to have noticed--or cared--how offended many GLBT and allied members of the community would feel.
At the same time, this has nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with Obama's persistent hope and vision that the Inaugural can be a catalyst event for bringing the country together despite policy differences that can be quite deep in places. Warren has some nasty, bigoted and frankly homophobic views, but he is also a strong advocate against poverty and some of the "old school" concerns of the Christian church. Further, the benediction, in contrast, will be given by a very progressive cleric, one who is a strong supporter of GLBT rights. Isn't there something more important to our lives beyond January 20, that we could be focusing on?
So I've kind of vacillated back and forth whether I should be upset about Obama's choice or not. One person who's made up his mind is Portland's Rev. Chuck Currie, who is the Pastor over at Parkrose UCC, and also maintains an active progressive blog that I linked to his name, just above.>
I am deeply troubled that President-elect Obama has invited Rick Warren to offer the invocation at the inauguration. Warren stands opposed to the progressive agenda and to many of the core values that Barack Obama campaigned on. The symbolism of offering such as prodigious place in history to a figure such as Warren is upsetting.
Warren is a good spokesman for the Religious Right but does not represent mainstream Christianity.
"My blood pressure is really high right now," said Rev. Chuck Currie, minister at Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon. "Rick Warren does some really good stuff and there are some areas that I have admired his ability to build bridges between evangelicals and mainline religious and political figures... but he is also very established in the religious right and his position on social issues like gay rights, stem cell research and women's rights are all out of the mainstream and are very much opposed to the progressive agenda that Obama ran on. I think that he is very much the wrong person to put on the stage with the president that day."
Kudos to Chuck for getting his voice out there, and standing up as a progressive Christian definitely NOT fixated on gays and abortion. I think, given the fact that Obama and Warren are personal friends, that the chances the latter's appearance won't go off as planned are basically nil. But it's a good debate to have.
LO reader and blogpublisher Darrelplant had an interesting tech/politics piece crossposted to Daily Kos today. One of the many ways in which the Obama campaign innovated not only beyond John McCain's capacity to match him, but beyond what any other major presidential campaign had even tried, much less succeeded with, was the IPhone applet that provided a virtual Obama desktop literally at your fingertip. Not only is it functional, it looks dynamite on screen. And as darrel points out, it's largely a product of Portland's creative class.
That's Darrel's larger point, that Obama's advantage is much more about creative spirit and understanding of the medium's limitless capacity, than it is about money or products that will allow the Republicans to "catch up" to the left when it comes to online politics. "The right has radio; the left has the internet" is becoming a truism because it's...true. And while the GOP is doing its darndest to try to replicate even the Howard Dean beta version of the magic, they're still just making excuses about what's gone wrong until now:
First, let me just say that you would have to ask whether there would have been enough McCain/Palin-oriented iPhone users to make it worthwhile for the campaign. Personally, I think there would have been (for reasons you will hear in a minute). The main thrust of the Politico story, however, was that the McCain team was whining about how so much of the high-tech community supported Obama that they just couldn't get their ideas out of the gate.
To which I say: codswallop.
"Memo to self: next time get the co-founder of Facebook on your team," said McCain-Palin veteran Becki Donatelli. "The CEO of Google was in the Obama commercial. I mean, you don't get more out front than that."
Speaking on a panel about the role of technology in the 2008 campaign, Donatelli said the McCain team had plans for using the Internet to reach voters, but ultimately lacked the resources and the personnel to put them into action.
Oooh, Obama had Facebook and Google on his side! Well, last I heard, McCain's national campaign co-chair was former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, someone he floated as a potential Treasury Secretary when asked about that position in the second presidential debate. Surely in her decade at eBay she made a few technically-inclined contacts? And last I looked, there were plenty of programmers around the world eager for work if they couldn't find someone in the US who wanted to work for McCain.
In other words, for the "we didn't have the resources" complaint to be valid means that McCain's people couldn't manage to find some way to outperform a team of unpaid Obamaphiles that could be counted on two hands. How pathetic would that be, if it's true? Ot is it just as likely that they were so incompetent that they didn't think of doing it and now they're lying about it? Considering how Republicans tend to run things, it could be either one of those or a combination of both.
It's an amazing time. Both Democrats and Republicans are doing a lot of mouthing of the right words, but really who can tell if their intent will be borne out, or one or both sides will simply revert to status quo ante? That's why we watch, I suppose. Anyway, the online organizing program is just one tiny section of the campaign they'll be writing about for a hundred years. And thanks to some clever Portlanders, the iPhone app will be emblematic of where the gap continued to remain between Democrats and Republicans when it came to technolitics.
Tonight on Washington Week, PBS's Gwen Ifill and guests John Dickerson (Slate), Jeanne Cummings (Politico), Shailagh Murray (The Washington Post) and Michael Viqueira (NBC News) discussed Oregon's U.S. Senate race and Barack Obama's coattails.
Obama's recently cut ad for Merkley got their attention, as did Gordon Smith's party-identification avoidance. But mostly it was Obama's coattails.
OK, I've given Team Merkley plenty of (IMO deserved) shit this campaign, but they are rightly ALL OVER this developing story involving not only Gordon Smith but John McCain. From Huffington Post a while ago:
Oregon's Gordon Smith has become the fourth Republican Senator to disavow John McCain's robocalls linking Barack Obama to Bill Ayers.
In a statement to the Huffington Post, Smith for Senate press secretary Lindsay Gilbride said: "They [the Ayers calls] are not taking place in Oregon and Senator Smith does not condone these sort of calls. Negative robocalls are not appropriate and have no place in campaigns."
OK, fair enough. It's a pretty far walk from being McCain's Oregon Chair (a job since shunted off to former Goob Vic Atiyeh) to repudiating McCain for his nasty tactics, but in the end Gordo is doing the right thing. However, Merkley isn't about to let him get away with it, in an update to the HP story:
Jeff Merkley's campaign responds to Sen. Smith's new position, describing it as hypocritical in a statement:
"Gordon Smith is a complete hypocrite. Just like John McCain, Gordon Smith and Karl Rove are using robocalls to attack Jeff Merkley. On top of that, Smith and the Oregon Republican Party are paying this company (FLS) thousands of dollars for undisclosed services. Smith should immediately fire this group of Bush-Rove hacks and demand that Freedom's Watch get out of Oregon."
The Merkley campaign cites FEC reports showing that FLS-Connect, the company in charge of McCain's robocalls, has been paid nearly $100,000 by Smith's campaign in the last year.
Duhhh....Gordo should have kept his mouth shut. But in his zeal to distance himself from every single living Republican on the planet as a way to rescue his slipping chances at re-election, he left his flank wide open--and Merkley shanked him but good. Well done.
The PUMAs are on life support, but the McCain campaign has managed to expeller-press a couple of "feminist" women from out of the woodwork to endorse COB (Cranky Ol' Bastard). Who says so? Mayor Sam says so! Well, it's not THAT Mayor Sam--more like Da Mayor--but I couldn't resist citing him anyway:
Prameela Bartholomeusz - a small business owner and a member of the Democratic National Platform Committee, Linda Klinge - Past Oregon president and now Vice-President of theNational Organization of Women, Shelly Mandell - President of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women, Lynn Rothschild - member of the Democratic Platform Committee, Elaine Lafferty - a former editor in chief of Ms. Magazine.
I hardly think this is the sentinel event to indicate a mass surge of women voters for McCain, especially on the basis that he represents the tenets of feminism in his campaign. And clearly citizens of this country have every right to back whomever they like in whatever race they wish.
But you really have to have a bit of a screw loose to be fighting for the expanded rights of women in this country, and choose John McCain and Sarah Palin as your standard bearers. Here's just one set of examples to suggest how counterintuitive it is, but really...do you need to have it discretely explained? The choice of Palin itself--which amounted almost entirely to "Hey, we need us some ovaries on this bus!"--is about the most unfeminist thing I can think of on McCain's record. Did he pick her because she was knowledgeable, prepared and experienced? Uh, no. If that's what he wanted, there are several Republican women out there who fit the bill in the high-profile way required. Palin, not so much.
I've been unable to discover any remarks by Ms. Klinge on her support for McCain; I'd love to hear her defense of his policies on women's issues. Really, I would.
Updating--here's a handy column just published at Huffington Post, by Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority. Excerpts below the fold...
New poll over in the sidebar--how will our Senate race turn out? Who will win, and by what margin of victory? And as long as you're in a predictive mood, why not head over to the DPO's "November Madness" game? For a measly $5 contribution to the state party, you get the chance to guess at Obama's electoral college total on the 4th, as well as his popular vote percentage in all 50 states. It's unclear what, if anything, you can win other than bragging rights, but DPO could use the money and it's always fun to predict and then see how you did on Election Night. You can enter multiple times, so try different strategies and hedge your bets. I'll even give you a little hint: start with 300 EV for Obama as a floor, and go upward from there. :)
[Loaded Orygun is happy to (with permission) reprint the diaries coming from Les and Sue AuCoin, who are headed to Ohio to campaign/canvass for Democratic candidates. You can read them yourself at Ohio Political Journal, or catch the reprints here...]
In Round 2, McCain needed a game-changer, and did not get it. Obama wanted to close the sale and did not do it. But Obama moved closer to his goal than McCain did his, with 29 days left, by sweeping the board on polls judging the debate.
On the other hand, a recent AP-Yahoo! News poll found that 18 percent of likely voters are up for grabs — undecided or willing to change their minds — little more than five weeks before Americans choose between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain.
A large chunk of these voters say they are hurting on a personal level from the country’s economic woes, and, like everyone else, they say the economy is the top issue. Most are looking for a better life and a leader to help make it happen — and most haven’t found what they seek in Obama or McCain.
Apropos of this, over at Five Thirty Eight blog, there’s a discussion of race and what Obama’s ceiling may be, and some concern that he may be near it, which would mean, if true, that McCain has an advantage with those undecideds.
It’s the most nerve-wracking election I’ve ever been through.
[Loaded Orygun is happy to (with permission) reprint the diaries coming from Les and Sue AuCoin, who are headed to Ohio to campaign/canvass for Democratic candidates. You can read them yourself at Ohio Political Journal, or catch the reprints here...]
Waterloo, Iowa
I’ll just say this: if on this trip we’re going to meet our Waterloo, let it be in Iowa, not Ohio.
This, though not representative of Ohio undecideds, is one of the targets of our mission. Leave a comment with the message you think will reach him. (Don't be too serious.)
Eleven and a half hours on the road today, across South Dakota (a helluva lot wider than tall, dammit!), and into Iowa.
If any of you have ever driven from Madras to Culver–central Oregon flatland farming country–then you have as good as driven through Iowa. Except that those few Oregon miles are on a spool here and someone keeps rolling them out ahead of you, ahead of you, ahead …
I’ve been thinking about the Biden-Palin debate all day, and it came to me who Palin reminds me of: Trudy, the Bag Lady, in our friend, Lily Tomlin’s one-woman play, Searching For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe. Trudy, see, was a conduit for messages from deep space.
How else does one explain the collision of thought shards or Ifill questions and Palin answers passing each other like ships in a fog?
I’m proud of Joe Biden. If Failin’ beat expectations, I say, well, if you start at zero …
(My best friend in Ashland wrote to tell me that she was winking at him.)
[Loaded Orygun is happy to (with permission) reprint the diaries coming from Les and Sue AuCoin, who are headed to Ohio to campaign/canvass for Democratic candidates. You can read them yourself at Ohio Political Journal, or catch the reprints here...]
On Wednesday, my wife and I will drop everything we’re doing and drive to Ohio to campaign for Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the last month of the campaign.
We hope we can provide a modicum of help in a battleground state for a ticket we hope and believe will lead the country into a new era of progressive governance and away from the law-of-the-jungle, soak-the-middle class, robber baron era of most of the last thirty years.
But the most important thing we will influence will no doubt be our own psyches. If we sit by as observers much longer, we’re both going to blow a gasket. Rather than hoping neoconservatives won’t steal this country, we want to help Obama and Biden stop them from it, and roll back the trickle-down fleecing, the environmental pillaging and the preemptive war-making that has already occurred.
We hope this journal will give you an up-close and personal look at the campaign from the trenches of a hotly contested state that may decide the election. In 104 years–with only three exceptions–no one has won the White House without winning Ohio’s electoral votes.
So, we’ll now throw everything we have into Ohio to try to restore the best instincts of the country we grew up in. If, god forbid, Obama should lose, at least we’ll have a good answer when our granddaughters ask us, “Pop-Pops and Nana, what did you do in the table stakes election of 2008?”
I caught this story earlier today in The O, and clucked my tongue at the sad small-mindedness of people that still exists regarding race--but ultiamtely opted to write it off as an isolated, parochial (pun intended) incident and not give the nutwich cranks who did it any more play than they deserved.
However, the story is beginning to spread across the internet, which gives it something of a meta importance; ie a story about Oregon being discussed elsewhere is a story in itself. So if you missed it this morning, here's a quick capsule:
The president of George Fox University this morning denounced the hanging of a likeness of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama on campus along with graffiti aimed at minority recipients of a scholarship program.
President Robin Baker discussed the incident today during the twice-weekly campus service, which was packed. With dozens of Act 6 students and student leaders in front of the stage, he urged students to show that the display, found Tuesday, has no place in Christian ideals.
"We absolutely cannot hate those around us and say we love God," he said. "It is not possible."
"Yesterday was not a good example of what it means to follow Jesus," he said.
Quoting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, the president said the university has long had difficulties recruiting nonwhite students and his dream has been to help create a university that "more broadly represents the kingdom of God."
If I had to guess I'd say this is a bit of a boilerplate job--insert the name of the state and the accurate number of job losses--but in lieu of an actual visit by Barack Obama during the fall campaign, we may have to settle for template remarks like these from the candidate, as released by the Obama for Oregon team:
This week, we learned that more than 8,600 Oregon jobs have been lost this year - including another 7,400 just last month. Only someone as out of touch as my opponent could say that 'the fundamentals of the economy are strong' at a time when so many families are struggling.
Amid the greatest economic crisis of our time, we desperately need to change the way Washington and Wall Street work so that middle class families aren't left to fend for themselves while CEOs get tax breaks and golden parachutes. We can't afford four more years of the Bush-McCain economic policies that led our economy into this mess - we need to change direction and start putting America's jobs and America's workers first.
Boilerplate or not, at least one campaign understands they don't call it a "popular college," and is tailoring messaging at the state level. Smart. And what's he plan to do about the problem?
Today, Barack Obama met with his top economic advisors in Florida to discuss his plan to stabilize the financial system and turn the economy around. They will finalize Obama's plan to call for the passage of a Homeowner and Financial Support Act that would establish a more stable and permanent solution to the crisis.
LO reader and 
Tonight on 
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