btchakir's blog

Bush, in a speech in Jerusalem this morning, has told the Kenesset that some candidates (meaning Obama) woud negotiate with terrorists and this is the equivalent to wanting to negotiate with Hitler.

This is a disgusting attack on more than one level:
- it contradicts the custom of campaigning against a political opponent in a foreign country...
= it ignores the fact that Bush's own State Dept is indirectly negotiating with the Iranians now...
- it defies Bush's claim that he is not going to get involved in the campaigns during the primaries...
- it ignores the fact that Bush has negotiated with terrorists in the past (Libya comes to mind
- it is an obvious move to alienate American Jews in Florida against Obama...
- it is without truth.

The question now is will McCain take a stand against this vile attack from Bush or join with it? He had better nake a statement regarding this statement by the President immediately, or he lowers his own campaign into Bush's gutter.

Under The LobsterScope

OK... Hillary won a big one with the ueducated, all white majority in West Virginia. Then she gave a follow-up speech which indicated she was still heading for the nomination.

But with too few primaries to go and Obama only 143 delegates away from the nomination, her future as the presidential candidate is just not there. The numbers are against her:

Total Delegates Obama 1882 - Clinton 1714 Obama +168
Super Delegates Obama 284 - Clinton 272 Obama +12
Pledged Dels. Obama 1598 - Clinton 1442 Obama +156
Popular Vote Obama 49.4%- Clinton 47.4% Obama +2.0%

She'll fight for her results in Florida and Michigan, but is likely to get less than she wants. She'll win in Kentucky and Ohio, but will lose Oregon and Montana. And the Super Delegates will probably know how to count and will go with Obama, too.

She's low on funds, but will lend herself more. And if she gets up to the Convention without paying that money back, she loses it. She can afford it, however, when you count the money Bill has made, they have plenty.

We know the Democrats should be putting all their energy and expenses against McCain now, but Hillary's not letting up and it is to McCain's advantage.

It is to the Party's advantage for the Super Delegates to come aboard for Obama now.

Under The LobsterScope

Dear Hillary Clinton:

Since you like to bombard me with e-mail and recorded phone calls, I know you must be interested in me. After all, I'm a lower-middle-class (family income around $50K) white guy living in West Virginia... working a part-time teaching job (I got laid off a couple of years ago as a well-paid computer consultant to the IRS and folks in their sixties aren't readily re-hired in that field).

I live in Shepherdstown, where you visited on Tuesday. I didn't get close enough to see you (parking was a real drag and driving around looking for a spot on $3.71 per gallon gas was a real bummer), but I know you were really there talking to me.

I've been listening to your USA Today interview quote on TV yesterday and today... you know... where you distinguished between hard working white guys who you appealed to and Obama didn't. Frankly, I thought we had gotten beyond thinking about ourselves as black or white this year. I went to an Obama support meeting here in Jefferson County last month and there were members of several racial groups there... and many of us were white (I think we were all hard working, too, but I'm not sure about Asians or Hispanics or the African-Americans who were there... you'll have to let me know.)

We get to do early voting in the WV Primary and I'm afraid to tell you that I already voted last weekend. And I voted for Obama. Of course that was before you let me know how hard working white folks were supposed to vote.

So I guess what I want to say is "Sorry". And could you have your folks stop calling me and e-mailing me? I feel bad enough as it is.

- Blue Collar Bill

Under The LobsterScope

Here's a piece of a dismaying article from McClatchy:
WASHINGTON — John McCain dropped a little-noticed bombshell into his March foreign-policy address: Boot Russia from the G-8, the elite club of leading industrial democracies whose leaders try to coordinate economic policies.

But the fact that he's proposing to try, risking a return to Cold War tensions with the world's second-largest nuclear power after 20 years of prickly partnership, raises questions about McCain's judgment. It also underscores that many of his top foreign-policy advisers are of the same neo-conservative school that promoted the war in Iraq, argue for a tougher stance toward Iran and are skeptical of negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program.

Since no single G-8 Nation can kick out another, and since a consensus on dismissing Russia is not likely, one wonders why McCain would even make such a ploy. Perhaps he is under the influence of the same NeoCons who got us into Iraq through seriously misleading means, or who want to do the same in Iran. If so, when the Democrats run on the Campaign tome that a McCain election would mean a third Bush term, it is not at all far-fetched.

Perhaps he thinks he would be sending Russia a message that would jolt Putin and friends into an enforced agreement with American Foreign Policy. Perhaps he just doesn't like Putin (we know his buddy Holy Joe Lieberman doesn't).

I can't think of a better reason NOT to vote for McCain and to elect Obama, who is determined to begin with diplomacy before threatening force.

Under The LobsterScope

Yesterday I wondered if Obama could get over the Reverend Wright crap... Then he made his speech in which he disconnected himself from Wright, who has grown less and less understandable over a three day period. To tell you the truth, I began to believe that Wright was working behind the scenes for McCain... or at the very least for Hillary.

John Stewart summed the situation up best on The Daily Show:

Then, after Obama's very controlled, but obviously angry, speech, I got the real sense of someone who could deal with an immense people-problem. If he can handle Wright this way, I have no doubt that he can rationally handle the Arabs or the Venezuelans, or even the Congress.

Under The LobsterScope

As I drove past the Sheetz gas station in Shepherdstown this morning (once the lowest-priced venue in the area and now one of the most expensive) regular gas listed for 3.75 a gallon. It made me think. I drive approximately 30 miles a day to and from work in a car that averages 33 miles to the gallon (a 2001 Toyota Echo). That means just driving to work now runs me about $75.00 a month just to commute to work. It used to cost me a third of that... $25.00 a month.

The cost of food, largely dependent on the trucking costs that bring carrots to the Food lion in Shepherdstown, for example, has increased by about 30% in the past few months. Eating is now a much more expensive pastime.

So basics have gone up about $1800.00 a year, but payroll hasn't.

My retirement account has lost eight thousand dollars this past quarter or so because of the dive of the stock markets and the wretched effect of the mortgage fiasco on the economy. That means, with my increase in expenses, I'm now $10,000.00 poorer. I haven't figured my wife in here, but if I did, our household would have taken at least a $20,000.00 dive.

I don't feel middle-class anymore. I used to. Since Reagan, the government that regulated banks and oil and trade and insurance and airlines and all the basic needs we consider to be the foundation of middle class existence has de-regulated everything, leaving corporations and lobbyists and multi-millionaires (and Charles Gibson, apparently) in charge of this faltering economy.

Conservatives, who have dominated this country for the past 30 years or so, have always claimed to be protectors of America... champions of small and efficient government... those who see America as safe for Americans. In reality, they have destroyed the America we had and fought two world wars for. They have exploded the size of government, primarily to deal with the massive infusion of corporate lobbyists they have turned much of America over to.

The folks we now call liberals are, I believe, the real conservatives. Those who would conserve America for Americans... regulate corporations back from their status as "citizens" to their former existence as job sites... bring banks and mortgage companies under ethical scrutiny, not be their own kind, but by our elected officials.

Elected officials! We once elected people to pass laws and regulate those who would take over and rape the economy. We have to get back there again.

It is one of the reasons I support Barack over Hillary. Lobbyists and "free traders"(there's a misnomer if ever there was one!) know she will keep things in their interest. Obama, so far, actually looks like a change.

Let's hope.

Under The LobsterScope

When they brought this lapel pin business up last night as some kind of whether-or-not-you-are-a-patriotic-American sign, Obama was forced to defend himself.

But no one mentioned that Hillary wore no flag pin.

I went back into the web and looked at Hillary in pictures and saw what appeared to be a Senate member ID pin on a lapel in one picture - not an American flag - and in the majority of pictures found no flag pin.

Then I did a Google search on John McCain photos. Guess what? No flag pins.

Gibson and Stephanopoulos must not have noticed these other candidates. And, of course, they were not wearing flag pins either.

Oh the UnAmericanism of it all!

Under The LobsterScope

If I lived in Pennsylvania I would be very upset at how Clinton and McCain were waging their attacks on Obama.

I would be awfully unhappy with the pandering that Hillary was doing as she makes herself out to be a family-culture-gun-shooter behind the cabin with Daddy.

I would feel that her "drink with the boys" moment in Indiana which she promoted in Pennsylvania day and night made me seem unable to discuss political issues.

I would be upset that both Clinton and McCain were making Obama out to be an "elitist" as they snuggled against their millions and upper-class backgrounds while Obama wouldn't be able to hail an uptown cab in New York at night.

I would wonder why PACs and lobbyists were the fundamental source of Hillary's money-raising while donations averaging $125.00 were Obama's - and he was topping both other candidates in raising funds, even among small-towners.

I would be perfectly aware that Obama respected my intelligence and education, whereas Hillary and McCain treated me like an easily motivated child.

I don't live in Pennsylvania. And I hope West Virginia will rise above this crap.

Under The LobsterScope

Hillary knows what Barack meant in his "bitter" comment. He was not being elitist. He was not looking down on small-town folk. By taking his words out of context she tried to get folks to believe something totally different.

Here, I'll have Barack explain his words himself:

Now... since I think Hillary knew what he meant all along, by pretending she didn't means she's either stupid, or a Republican... and I don't think she's stupid. As an example of what she was doing, let's take Hillary out of context. Suppose you saw this picture taken while she was courting rural Pennsylvanians in a bar:

Now, what if it were printed with the caption: "Cross-eyed Drunk partys with Lobbyists."

See what I mean.

Under The LobsterScope