And so is Jimmy Carter for saying that the candidate with the most pledged delegates in June is the nominee.

Since I don't have a toolbar - links aren't working so here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/29/22311/1376/403/506057

I just have to say I think the way the media is treating Obama is a bunch of crap. Just watched a rerun of the press conference he gave about Wright, I think he is pretty upset. What the hell is wrong with Wright anyway? I thought he was a nice guy after the Moyer's interview but have changed my mind.

That said, I still think Obama will win NC with a big margin, I'm not so sure about IN.

I still think he has support, and the superdelegates will drizzle in.

As far as that Ike whats his name superdelegate she got today, he is owned by the Clintons. The blogs are saying the NC gov endorsed her because Obama refused to debate in his state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30wed1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

s m - I took comfort in what Carter said today on Hardball and in his interview with the Daily Telegraph that the candidate with the most pledged delegates after June 3 is the nominee. He won't let anyone usurp the will of the voters. Rules IS rules I say! ;-) Still, I'm so tired of these pundits making this a horse race. It isn't - not even close.

for the links from the old threads to the new - you've really got that linky thing down! I still don't have a toolbar - my account is considered 'inactive' so I can't change any settings or create a new account with my email addy. and I'll be darned if I'm gonna set up a new email addy just so I create a new dfa account... I'll wait until they finish tweeking the blog. ;)

Wright is IMO a racial bigot (and I'm glad Obama divorced ever having anything to do with hime from now on, that Wright is Wrong, that Wright wrongly slammed all whites in America, including, by extension, the people who raised him, ie. Obama's mother and grandparents):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30wed1.html

Editorial

Mr. Obama and Rev. Wright

Published: April 30, 2008

It took more time than it should have, but on Tuesday Barack Obama firmly rejected the racism and paranoia of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and he made it clear that the preacher does not represent him, his politics or his campaign.

...

Last month, Mr. Obama delivered a speech in which he said he disapproved of Mr. Wright’s racially charged comments but said that the pastor still played an important role in his spiritual life.

It was a distinction we were not sure would sit well with many voters. But what mattered more was the speech’s powerful commentary on the state of race relations in this country. We hoped it would open the door to a serious, healthy and much-needed discussion on race.

Mr. Wright has not let that happen. In the last few days, in a series of shocking appearances, he embraced the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. He said the government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill blacks. He suggested that America was guilty of “terrorism” and so had brought the 9/11 attacks on itself.

This could not be handled by a speech about the complexities of modern life. It required a powerful, unambiguous denunciation — and Mr. Obama gave it. He said his former pastor’s “rants” were “appalling.” “They offend me,” he said. “They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”

He said he was angry that Mr. Wright suggested that he was insincere when he previously criticized the pastor’s views. “If Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well,” Mr. Obama said. “And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either.”

...

Senator John McCain has continued to embrace a prominent white supporter, Pastor John Hagee, whose bigotry matches that of Mr. Wright. Mr. McCain has not tried hard enough to stop a race-baiting commercial — complete with video of Mr. Wright — that is being run against Mr. Obama in North Carolina.

If Mr. Obama is the Democratic presidential nominee, we fear that there will be many more such commercials. And Mr. Obama will have to repudiate Mr. Wright’s outbursts many more times.

This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race. Mr. Obama’s repudiation of Mr. Wright is part of that. His opponents also have a responsibility — to repudiate the race-baiting and make sure it stops.

I watched the rerun of last night's Jon Stewart. He had one bittersweet comic bit at the beginning. He was talking about Howard on MTP yesterday (and showing a photoshopped bloaty ugly picture of Howard) and was mocking what Howard said about 'electibility' would be the key factor in choosing a nominee. So Stewart kept talking about the importance of 'electibiltiy' in choosing a candidate from headlines -- BUT the headlines were from 2004 and were about Kerry. The underlying message (at least I think it was) was that in 2004 the Democrats chose Kerry over Howard b/c they thought Kerry was more 'electable' and -- look what happened.

I see you still can't link. Why can some link and others can't. I could until today.

political pundits in the US..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/1904702/The-50-most-influential-US-political-pundits.html

Rachel Maddow made the list. check out Keith.

is in the top 30 - can't wait to see the number. He's only mentioned in the top 50 but his ranking (lol) will be announced tomorrow. I think he'll come in pretty high. I'm sure O'Reilly is up there with Hannity. Blech. BTW, did anyone catch Hillary in Bill O's show? I wouldn't dare watch.

Your Life's Purpose

=======================

I have never seen the much talked about toolbar!

I'm sure life's purpose is not about toolbars then again for some it might be.

Anyone who believes that life has a purpose beyond maintaining life is nuts.~
Or nuanced.~~~~~~~~~`

on the race. Kitty Dukakis is an *Obama fanatic*.

If anyone cares to read what Dukakis thinks about the race - here it is.

http://www.observer.com/2008/dukakis-its-probably-obama-08-campaign-needs-improve

linda b, you're doing wonderful necessary work politically.  Keep it up.

Tolle keeps it simple:

"Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you."

page 74

MIDEAST: Israel Could Make Orphans Homeless Again
By Zack Baddorf

A Palestinian makes a point. Credit:Zack Baddorf

HEBRON, The West Bank, Apr 28 (IPS) - Nibaal Shriteh may soon be homeless. The 17-year-old Palestinian lives in a Hebron orphanage but, if the Israeli military has its way, she and 240 fellow orphans like her will be out on the streets.

"I am talking to you today from this place, from my home, from my school, from my class," Shriteh told a handful of independent media and assembled local and international supporters at a press conference Apr. 7 inside the Al-Shar'iya Girls Orphanage. "But tomorrow I'll be talking to you as a lonely, lost person from the street."

The Israel Defence Forces issued orders Feb. 25 for the closure and confiscation by Apr. 7 of orphanages, schools and other facilities owned by the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS), claiming the foundation "masquerades as a charity organisation in order to cover its activities of increasing support of the Hamas terror network."

"The foundation in Hebron not only raises money for terrorism, it also recruits new terror operatives and disseminates the creed of anti-Zionism and jihad among the population," an IDF spokesman told IPS.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42151

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Mortar, Rocket attacks in Baghdad;
in aftermath of Militia Campaign

Baghdad has been roiled for the past three days with major fighting between Iraqi government/ US forces and the Mahdi Army militia in east and north Baghdad, leaving 45 militiamen dead and an unstated number of Iraqi troops. At one point on Sunday, the a Mahdi Army company nearly took a government checkpoint in the northeast, and the US had to bring in a tank to save the Iraqi army unit.

Guerrillas launched numerous mortar and katyusha rocket attacks on Monday. Reuters reports: "A mortar round landed behind the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone government compound, wounding five people including a child, police said . . . Five people were wounded in a mortar attack in Abu Nawas street in central Baghdad . . . Three mortar bombs landed on a police station in Jazair district, eastern Baghdad, wounding three policemen . . . A mortar blast wounded one person in the Mansour district, western Baghdad . . ."

http://www.juancole.com/

hit some key who knows which one and my long message disappeared.
Wow, this blog has become so smart to not accept postings of incompetent users.~

This is the post that disappeared:

Charles Kingsley

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about"

what a tangle of emotions for obama! but i wouldn't be surprised at an outpouring of empathy for him and a second look by those who would have voted for hillary on the basis of rev wright's histrionics.

btw, rev barbara reynolds, an ardent clinton supporter, was instrumental in inviting wright to the national press club. it's suspicious that this subterranean deal was hatched just when hillary morphed into an altruistic colleague, chiding mccain for not intervening more in the north carolina repub party's ad of rev wright and two of obama's supporters. hillary's webbed footprints were all over.

**************

JOHN MCCAIN + LINCOLN SAVINGS AND LOAN + ENRON + BEAR STEARNS
+ GASOLINE TAX HOLIDAY

HILLARY CLINTON + ANN COULTER + SEAN HANNITY + BILL O'REILLY + WHAT'S HIS NAME IN PITTSBURGH + GASOLINE TAX HOLIDAY

what do you get? a half-tank of gas and $9 billion deeper in debt and another day older.

one more post before calling it a night..........

since 1990, the fda has known about benzene in soda without alerting the public. the chemical is a carcinogen formed by the reaction of ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate in storage. the longer the soft drinks sit around and the warmer the storage environment, the higher the benzene level. see EFFECT MEASURE.

Oops.

This is a test.

Dropping by to see how some old friends are doing.

I don't seem to have any "toolbar" as some keep noting that we should have.

April 2008 has generally been a sad month that I do not want to relive. So I will not.

Have been generally following the campaigns from afar. In spite of the current Rev. Wright kerfluffle (which the Rethugs would certainly have raised again this fall, as it does look to be Obama as the Dem nominee (believe me, they're even very excited about him in MT ... Rev. Wright notwithstanding), the Dems are generally in good shape. Don't let the press, which keeps trying to create "chasms" where there are none, tell you that we're not.

We all know that 'Cain = Bush III and there is no way that our country can survive that. We may not even survive as it is, thanks to putzCo's successful destruction of our government as a functioning entity, its destruction of our economy, of our USD value, of our goodwill ... and its shredding of the one document that, above all, made us unique, the US Constitution.

Stop by the DNC and see what Howard's doing and take heart from the wonderful groundwork he has helped to lay everywhere.

But the press would rather distort and create divisions.

I for one, happen to believe that the Rev. Wright, unlike any one of the current crop of criminal warmongers in power and any cowardly lickspittle members of Congress and the Senate who will not bring these monsters to accounting for their crimes, is a genuine American patriot, who has earned the right to speak his mind, however unseemly we may find it. What I have heard has been nothing but the truth, unsavory as it is. The Bill Moyers interview was a classic. Nearly everything since has been "gotcha." Keep that in mind.

It's a distraction while the torturers remain in power and mount their assualt against Iran.

If this long diatribe actually posts, I'll be happily surprised and send my fervent thanks to Danny and all the unseen unnamed gremlins who are really trying to make a difference so that we can actually converse.

I hope to drop in from time to time again, but perhaps when I actually have a toolbar. LOL

It comes and goes.

Hi, Judy.

May your difficulties pass ...  yesterday.  Good to hear from you.

I am complete.  Tool bar and working comment box.  Of course, it's firefox which is one of the browsers this software was written for, so the bugs have been fewer.

Anyway, can't stay long.  Hope you all had a chance to watch the monsanto video from France

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiPW7EKn8nY

As some of you may have noticed, I've been paying attention to some of the side interests of the Stephens Group in Little Rock, Arkansas, who so kindly arranged for the seed money for the campaigns of the Bushes and the Clintons and who, together with the Rose Law firm provide a neat nexus for the monopolistic interests for some of the major monopolists in the area, such as WalMart, Tyson and Monsanto.

If you watched the video, you'll know that Monsanto has had a devastaging effect on some farmers in places like Indiand and India and Mexico and you won't be able to miss the connection between their problems and the promoters of globalization such as NAFTA.  Indeed, on the video, former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman is quite clear about the fact that the trade people in the White House gave him quite a bit of grief when he cautioned about pushing the transgenics over which Monsanto has more or less of a monopoly.  The only thing left out of the video is what role was played by the Council of the Americas, the David Rockefeller project, to which Thomas McLarty, Clinton's first Chief of Staff, migrated to supervise the implementation of NAFTA, after he'd shepherded it through Congress.  Perhaps that's what Clinton traded for the bucks he needed to stay in the running after the New Hampshire primary.  Maybe now would be a good time to ask Hillary Clinton about her work for the Stephens Group while she was at Rose.

Too bad so much attention was paid to Whitewater and we all overlooked what was happening with outfits like Delta Pine and Land, which was developing the terminator gene.  It's probably too much to hope to ask some questions now.  But, i'm going to write up a diary at KOS and see what happens.

good morning, Monica! thank you for the ivestigative journalism you provide for us all - I wish the cmw's would take your lead!

how are you liking our reversion to more 'seasonable weather' here in the north country? I'm glad we got some rain but, dam, I had to turn on the heat yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks! jeez, my gardens are at least 2 weeks ahead of themselves -it isn't even May yet and my strawberries have blossoms!! good thing the cold and wet won't be hanging around for too long!

hugs to Phil - hope your weather improves soon so you can get that seed in the ground.

up on deck today in IN:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/boonville

Community Event with Michelle Obama and Caroline Kennedy
Warrick County 4-H Center
133 East Degonia Road
Boonville, IN 47601

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
Doors open: 4:30 p.m.
Program begins: 6:00 p.m.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/bloomington

Rally with Barack Obama
Assembly Hall at Indiana University
1001 E. 17th St.
Bloomington, IN

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
Doors Open: 6:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 8:30 p.m.

Public parking is available at Gates 4 and 12.

Nobody has a clue how much oil is (or isn't ) under ANWR.
As Danny points out, It would take years (probably more than a decade) before the first oil flowed. Then there's the 30+-year old Trans-Alaskan Pipeleine, which is running into serious aging problems (leaks, corrosion, etc.)

I'm ashamed to say that my former agency (USGS) allowed itself to be bullied into upping their initial resource estimates, based on no new data, just big oil's clout, and Interior's desire to please Dubya.

http://www.kunstler.com/

The public appears aggressively clueless about the peak oil story. They do not accept any threats to the motoring regime. The news media is surely not helping sort things out. I saw a remarkable display of ignorance on CNN last week when the new resident idiot-maniac Glenn Beck hosted Teamster Union boss James Hoffa and they agreed that the oil companies were to blame for high fuel prices. To put it as plainly as possible, Beck doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, and it's disgraceful that CNN gives free reign to this moron to misinform the public. It's perhaps equally amazing that Hoffa doesn't know we have entered a permanent global oil crisis based on demand having outrun supply. These two idiots think that if Exxon-Mobil built a new refinery down in Louisiana, everything would be fine, diesel fuel would go back down to 99 cents a gallon, and it would be Christmas every morning.
This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.
We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?
But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days?
Events are not through with us this year. They'll keep moving where they will whether we believe in them or not. I'm hardly even convinced that it matters who wins the presidential race this year. It could end up being the world's biggest booby prize.

Monica, I took your advice and logged in through Firefox. By replying to my own post (above), I was able to get a toolbar, which I've been unable to achieve on IE

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/30/51430/6985/256/506204

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/link.php?id=58213

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists are faced with widespread political interference that has significantly increased under the Bush administration, a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) shows. Hundreds of the scientists surveyed (60 percent) reported some degree of political meddling, ranging from unnecessary delays to forced resignations.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd04292008.html

As the presidential horse race grows more frenzied and absurd -- Flag pins!  Bowling! Obliteration!-- it is important to keep in mind what the election is really about: torture.

Specifically, the use of torture as an openly admitted, formally recognized instrument of national policy, approved at the highest level of government. The Bush Administration has now dropped all pretense that it is not engaging in interrogation techniques and incarceration practices long recognized by both international and U.S. law as blatantly criminal. What's more, the Administration boldly asserts that the president can simply ignore laws prohibiting torture if he feels that circumstances warrant the use of "interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law," the New York Times reported over the weekend.

Torture is at the very heart of the Bush presidency, the most quintessential manifestation of its governing philosophy: a "Commander-in-Chief" state, where presidential directives can override any law in the name of "national security." The use of torture demonstrates that not even the most heinous crimes -- including techniques used by Nazi sadists and KGB brutes -- are beyond the pale of the "unitary executive's" arbitrary will.

I didn't know you were so handsome! smart and handsome - you tell the 'missus' that I said 'she done good'!

In a place called New England:

http://www.sc-sl.org/contact.html

The New York Times is keeping up its relentless attack on Obama--A front page article by the notorious Adam Nagourney and friends--then of course, MoDo is repeating the slash job she did on Dean in 04. They deserve to lose circulation, but not to the WSJ!

CNN just showed a clip of her talking about her temp reduction in the gas tax and you could hear about 4 people clap - seriously, no joke. then they moved on over to Obama explaining why he doesn't support it and you hear the clapping and happy cheering of hundreds, if not thousands.

it wasn't her fault that the media made her Ms. Inevitable from the start of this thing and now look how far she's fallen. she isn't stupid, just stubborn - she sees the small crowds and drip drip of the SDs each and every day. she and Bill are watching what they thought to be their final legacy simply disappear before their very eyes. I think she brought this on herself, but I do still feel her loss in this - I think we all lost something when she and Bill took the low road in this campaign.

John is right when stating no one knows how much oil is in ANWR. Also it would take years to see any results and I have heard the oil from ANWR is slated for China. But even if that were not true do we really want to destroy a beautiful pristine area, and a way of life to some of the Native people who live there?

Drilling in ANWR is an agenda for GWB and his cronie Ted Stevens.

I'm hoping Congress and the American public do not buy into this GWB propaganda B.S.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Want to add I am so sick and tired of the media.

My husband who was never a Wolf Blitzer fan, is absolutely pissed off at him. He watches CNN when I'm not home. From the expletives my husband was using Blitzer's ears must have been burning (I can only hope). What an a** he is.

and now it's time for his surrogates to step it up when the brain-dead media continue to flog this dead horse. he doesn't need to address this again, at least until the GE. Rep. Jan Shakowsky from Illinois just did a great job with Mika.

ATTN: Obama dels and super dels - it's time for you to have his back, dammit!

LINK

that will finally open the flood gates? Thom Hartman interviews AL Gov. Don Siegelman:

Thom Hartmann: Joe Wilson, the husband of Valerie Plame, the former US ambassador once issued, once laid out a sentiment that I think many of us share: "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." 1

In other words, he knew something was up. He knew something was up. And the evidence is mounting. Don Siegelman is with us. Donald Eugene Siegelman, he was the only person in the history of Alabama to be elected to serve in all four of Alabama's top state wide elected offices; Secretary of State, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor and Governor. And Don Siegelman, welcome to the program.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/interview-with-former-ala_b_99338.html