Actual Campaign News

In Raleigh last night, there were a couple of firsts - or at least one.

One was both Obama and Clinton vowing to support the other should they win the nomination. (I haven't heard this before, but I may have missed it.)

"If Senator Obama is the nominee, you better believe I will work my heart out for him," Clinton said. Obama offered a similar promise: "If Hillary Clinton were the nominee, I would support her in a heartbeat."

The other was Obama speaking up against Hillary in North Carolina - something he's been avoiding as the assumed winner of the state.

For the first time in the North Carolina primary, Obama drew sharp contrasts between himself and Clinton. He said he had not accepted campaign contributions from political action committees and Washington lobbyists, or adopted poll-tested positions, and had always opposed the war in Iraq.

"Real changes have never been easy," Obama told a raucous crowd. "The status quo doesn't give up without a fight. The status quo in this country are not just Republicans."

He used the tax holiday -- an idea that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, also supports -- to illustrate the Democratic Party's need to set itself apart.

"When we're offering the same things that John McCain is offering on the cheap, that means we are not presenting a truthful response to the challenges we face in America," Obama said. "We can do better than that this time."

Simple Enough for a Non-Hoosier or a Non-Tarheel

[Bumped back to top] Since the gas-tax holiday has become the cornerstone of McCain's and Clinton's campaigns (Clinton is flooding the airwaves with it), let's break it down to this extremely easy-to-fathom progression of events. Please feel free to pass it along to your friends who will be voting Tuesday.

Gas drops 18c a gallon (from the tax, not oil company profit).
People drive more.
People buy more gas.
Oil companies win.

Demand goes up.
Supplies go down.
Oil companies raise prices.
Oil companies win.

Summer ends.
Gas goes back up 18c a gallon.
People still have to drive to work.
Oil companies win.

Oh, and all summer long, American bridge and road maintenance crews will be unemployed.

If that's what you want, vote for McCain or Clinton.

Still Electrocuting the Troops

Shameful. Just posted at the New York Times site:

Despite Alert, Flawed Wiring Still Kills G.I.’s

In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water — one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool — that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar incidents. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.

While several deaths have been attributed to inadvertent contact with power lines under battlefield conditions, the Army bulletin said that five deaths over the preceding year had apparently been caused by faulty grounding, and the circumstances of others have not been fully explained by the Army. Many more soldiers have been injured by shocks, Pentagon officials and soldiers say.

The accidental deaths and close calls, which are being investigated by Congress and the Defense Department’s inspector general, raise new questions about the oversight of contractors in the war zone, where unjustified killings by security guards, shoddy reconstruction projects and fraud involving military supplies have spurred previous inquiries.

Hillary's Church and State Cocktail

From The Nation:

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate

When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship,"  also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

Sean Hannity has called Obama's church a "cult," but that term applies far more aptly to Clinton's "Family," which is organized into "cells"--their term--and operates sex-segregated group homes for young people in northern Virginia. In 2002,  Sharlet joined The Family's home for young men, forswearing sex, drugs and alcohol, and participating in endless discussions of Jesus and power. He wasn't undercover; he used his own name and admitted to being a writer. But he wasn't completely out of danger either. When he went outdoors one night to make a cell phone call, he was followed. He still gets calls from Family associates asking him to meet them in diners--alone.

The Family's most visible activity is its blandly innocuous National Prayer Breakfast, held every February in Washington. But almost all its real work goes on behind the scenes--knitting together international networks of right-wing leaders, most of them ostensibly Christian. In the 1940s, The Family  reached out to former and not-so-former Nazis, and its fascination with that exemplary leader, Adolf Hitler, has continued, along with ties to a whole bestiary of murderous thugs.

Downright...Republican.

Robust Dubyanomics

More good news, George.

The American economy lost 20,000 jobs in April, the fourth consecutive month of decline, in what many economists took as powerful evidence that the United States is almost certainly now ensnared in a recession.

STFU!

Really. Please. Enough already. Go quietly into that good night and JUST. SHUT. UP.

Speaking in front of more than 400 people Friday night during a sold-out reception at a hotel in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, Dick Cheney said that history will be very favorable to the Bush presidency:    

“When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president,” Cheney said.