Dean is first.

Following is the scheduling order for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC). The meeting has been scheduled for Saturday, 31 May 2008, at 9:30 AM at the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC.

There are appeals from two states to be heard, Florida and Michigan. Florida’s appeal will be heard first. The order of presentation is as follows:

Verbal presentation for Florida’s appeals – 15 minutes;
Questions by RBC Members – 10 minutes;
Verbal presentation by Florida Democratic Party representative – 15 minutes;
Questions by RBC Members – 10 minutes;
Verbal presentation by Hillary Clinton campaign representative – 15 minutes;
Questions by RBC Members – 10 minutes;
Verbal presentation by Barack Obama campaign representative – 15 minutes; and,
Questions by RBC Members – 10 minutes.
Total allocated time for Florida appeal is 100 minutes.

Michigan will present after Florida using a similar format.

These presentations will be broadcast live by CSPAN

Got this in an email this morning from Air America. I replied by writing back that I absolutely disagree. Whoever is on Obama's ticket is for him to decide!

I think they know that she and her baggage would be huge a drag on the ticket. Besides, Obama doesn't need her and her kind of politics AND her vote for the war.

Senator Hillary Clinton to Campaign in Toronto for Seating of Clinton Canadian Delegation at the DNC Convention. Next Stop, Hard-Working White Icelandic Vikings for Clinton. They Need to be Seated Too. And Then Its on to Zimbabwe for the Hillary "Vote the World" Tour.(Satire, Maybe)

http://www.kunstler.com/

Oil Passes $135/barrel in overnight Asian trading. Meanwhile, the airlines swerved closer to the end of their death spiral. American Airlines is cutting back 10 to 12 percent on its service starting in October, charging $15-a-bag for checked luggage, and firing thousands of employees. The airline's stock dropped 24 percent yesterday. The CEO of AA said, "The industry will not and cannot continue in its current state. The fact that four more airlines have liquidated this year and one is operating in Chapter 11 is clear evidence of that...."

Meanwhile, top executives of the US oil industry appeared before a Senate panel yesterday. This exercise demonstrated that the US Senate members remain utterly clueless about the global oil predicament, a.k.a. Peak Oil. They also apparently have no idea how the worldwide oil trade operates. In fact, 90 percent of the oil traded around the world (including the more than two-thirds of all America's supply which is imported) is produced not by the old "majors," but by the newer nationalized oil companies such as Saudi Aramco, Mexico's Pemex, Brazil's Petrobras, and so on. Anyway, world oil prices are set in an auction process on the spot and futures markets, not by the producers. Congress could slap punative windfall profits taxes on the old US "majors" (Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, et al), but that would only put in place a huge disincentive for this country to produce the oil it has left, and the net effect of less US oil being produced would be higher oil prices world-wide (including here). Meanwhile, notice that today's New York Times barely mentions the growing oil emergency.

http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad05222008.html

THE “race card” is out in full force. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, Republicans want to make their stand against Democrats. The city is at the centre of the 1st Congressional District, where a special election was held on May 13. Reliably conservative, the Republican Party has held the seat for several decades. The seat was hard fought between the Democrat Travis Childers and the Republican Greg Davis. Both are white, and both are fairly conservative. They would have to be to compete in a district that sent George Bush back to the White House in 2004 with a plurality.

One part of the onslaught against Childers, who eventually won the election, was that he was in the same party as Barack Obama. Advertisements using images of Obama with Childers, drawing on fears that Childers is as liberal as Obama, flooded television channels. But this was not just about politics. It was also about reviving fears that Childers was too closely affiliated with a powerful black man.

Overwhelmed by the Obama phenomenon, Hillary Clinton and her team have resorted to the kind of coded language that appeals to this racist voting bloc. After her loss in the South Carolina primary, where the Democratic electorate is substantially black, Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, told the press, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. Jackson ran a good campaign and Obama ran a good campaign here.”

When he was roundly criticised for this remark, Clinton lost his temper and suggested that he was being unfairly charged with racism and that the Obama camp “played the race card on me”. The Obama people disputed that their campaign won only because Obama is black, but they did not say that Clinton was being racist in his comments. He, however, took the occasion to play the aggrieved white man unfairly called racist. In doing this, Clinton appealed to those other white men who might find their privileges threatened by the presence of non-white people in their workplaces and neighbourhoods.

The surreptitious use of this kind of highly charged race language continued from South Carolina to Pennsylvania and onward. Eager to win the “white vote”, Hillary Clinton’s campaign began to question the ability of a black man to win over white voters. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Clinton supporter, told the press, “Some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate.”

Bill Clinton went to small Pennsylvania towns, to rooms with all-white audiences, to warn them that Obama did not represent “voters like you”. After her loss in North Carolina and slight win in Indiana, Hillary Clinton told the press that Obama does not have the support of “working, hardworking Americans, white Americans”. The only hardworking Americans in her scenario are white Americans, a view held precisely by those who believe the racist dogma that non-whites leech the system.

Obama’s opponents have turned to the coded racist grammar perfected by Republicans. But even this is not as effective as it once was. It gave Hillary Clinton the edge in Pennsylvania, but it did not give her as much a victory as she wanted in Indiana. In another special election, in Louisiana, Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated his Republican rival in a conservative district. The Republicans painted Cazayoux as a clone of Obama. While that cut into his lead, it could not bring him down.

The Mississippi election portends a shift in the power of this “white vote” and the declining significance of racist electioneering. The Republicans now talk of Obama’s “toxicity” in the general election, but perhaps if the Louisiana and Mississippi elections are any indicator, the ground might have shifted from Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Few can resist the Obama allure. Even the man who officiated over the wedding of George Bush’s daughter, Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, is an Obama supporter. The race card might finally be trumped.

Found a couple of articles on my trip around the www so will give the links when I reply to this in order to gain a toolbar.

Anyone have any plans for Memorial Day Weekend?

Found this on Drudge:

(why the hell doesn't the blog let you copy and paste)

(It's about a chimp getting 'rights' in Europe so he can have a guardian)

And from Politico...

An article about the ramifications of technological advances allowing live video streaming to the www and how it could bite one in the butt if one were a politician caught in a makaka moment...

This is ridiculous.  Clinton wants all votes counted unless they voted for someone else.

If this happens, which I doubt, the Dem party will be ripped apart.

SDs better step in now.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Ickes_We_want_the_Michigan_uncommitted_to_stay_uncommitted.html

don't link right now but he is ahead.
bye hillary.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGCGQr/commentary

for a cruise with her friend.

She is now officially a Canadian from Saskatchawan. Eh??

Sorry state of affairs this putz has put us in.

Be safe Kimbo.

New thread with dead link.

http://democracyforamerica.com/blog_posts/25350-failed-conservative-values-norman-solomon-on-dog-eat-dog-greed#1198673