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Why we challenge the government

post from Everyday Citizen on 16 May 2008 02:05:01 PM. © Everyday Citizen

Many apathetic and disaffected people ask me about my drive, dedication and determination to change[...]

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http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/05/why_we_challenge_the_governmen.html

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Kentucky Hosts NRA Convention This Weekend,
McCain to Speak

post from TalkLeft on 16 May 2008 02:02:00 PM. © TalkLeft

The NRA is holding its annual meeting in Louisville, KY this weekend. John McCain will be speaking. He has tended to campaign against Obama rather than Hillary. There are Democrats who belong to the NRA. The NRA backs Democrats who support their issue. If McCain attacks Obama on gun rights, will he cost him any primary votes?

Here's who the NRA backed in 2006:

The NRA has returned the favor. In this year's election, the group is backing Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren, Tennessee Rep. John Tanner and West Virginia Rep. Alan Mollohan, among others. In gubernatorial races, the NRA has endorsed Democrats in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming, and Bill Richardson, the former Clinton energy secretary and cabinet member, in New Mexico.

"The NRA is not an affiliate of the Republican party," said Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who also is an NRA board member. "They endorse incumbent Democrats who have voted with them on their issue. They understand that the first time they oppose a Democrat who has been supportive of the gun issue, they lose that D vote."

More...

The NRA has an active get out the vote effort. Hillary sent out these mailers in Indiana attacking Obama on gun rights. I wonder if they went out in Kentucky as well.

In April, the NRA wrote: "Obama’s alleged support of the Second Amendment is utterly cynical and false." To be sure, the NRA doesn't buy that Hillary is now a pro-gun rights candidate. But, with everyone convinced Obama has the nomination, I think he will be the one that the NRA and McCain attack the most in Louisville this weekend.

Bill Clinton was in Louisville yesterday as part of a three day swing through the state. Obama spent one day (Monday) in Kentucky. Hillary will be there tomorrow.

Clinton's visit to Louisville marked the start of a three-day swing through Kentucky. He had appearances last night in Bardstown and Elizabethtown and will make five stops today in Western Kentucky.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/291781886/3381

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Kentucky By the Numbers

post from TalkLeft on 16 May 2008 02:01:00 PM. © TalkLeft

According to the Kentucky Secretary of State, here is the breakdown of registered voters as of May 20, 2008:

Total: 2,857,231
Democrats 1,629,845
Republicans 1,040,438
Indpendents 186,948

Male 1,344,579
Female 1,512,503

Absentee ballots were available starting May 2 and have to be received by May 20, the date of the primary. In the 2004 primary (pdf), there were 563, 000 registered voters and a 23% turnout (375,000 voted in the Democratic primary, a 24% turnout.) Women and men voted in roughly equal numbers.

It's a closed primary and party registration changes had to be in by December 31. Registration ended April 22, 2008. Independents cannot vote in the primary.

My earlier post on Kentucky demographics is here.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/291781888/2333

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Straight-talking McCain Sets A Timetable On Iraq,
Then Denies It, Then Calls It Victory

post from Firedoglake on 16 May 2008 01:58:40 PM. © Firedoglake

St. McCain and the Republicans have been telling us for years that any discussion whatsoever of a specific time frame that our troops will come home from Iraq means al-Qaeda wins.From that liberal rag, the Wall Street Journal:After months of ridiculing[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/16/straight-talking-mccain-sets-a-timetable-on-ira
q-then-denies-it-then-calls-it-victory/

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A "Very Tall Order" For John W. McBush

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 16 May 2008 01:57:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

The New York Times wrote this editorial today, including the following (it started out with some nice sound bites from McCain, though the Times rightly notes that they were likely spurred on by the coming electoral Repug disaster)...

Mr. McCain said he would achieve victory in Iraq by 2013, for instance, without a glimmer about how he would do it. The Democratic candidates know that the next president?s task will be to extricate the United States from an unwinnable situation as cleanly as possible, not to hold out for an impossible final victory.

His promise to respect the constitutional balance between Congress and the White House raised questions, too. Is he willing to find and fix all the ways that Mr. Bush has undermined the Constitution and abridged civil liberties? Or is he just promising to do better?

Mr. McCain?s record is not encouraging. His approval was critical to the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, one of the most damaging pieces of legislation in the nation?s history. It created kangaroo courts at Guantánamo and suspended habeas corpus, a prisoner?s fundamental right to a hearing in a real court.

Mr. McCain won some improvements in the bill?s provisions on the treatment of prisoners, but acquiesced to an appallingly cynical deal that exempted the intelligence agencies from a ban on the torture, abuse and humiliation of detainees.

Just talking about change is not enough. Look at the Republican Party?s witless attempt to repackage itself with a new Barack Obama-like sound bite, only to find that ?The Change You Deserve? was the ad slogan for an antidepressant.

Mr. McCain?s speech highlighted some of the most egregious failures of the failed Bush presidency. But he needs to do much more to persuade the country that he has the ideas and the will to address them ? and that his party, which refused to question Mr. Bush for seven long years, is really the one to change direction.

It is a very tall order.

Indeed (and here's more on that).

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http://liberaldoomsayer.blogspot.com/2008/05/very-tall-order-for-john-w-mcbush.ht
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McCain's friends just keep getting richer

post from Daily Kos on 16 May 2008 01:55:05 PM. © Daily Kos

I've never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group — that's a clear, 24-year record. - John McCain

That clear, 24-year record keeps getting muddier:

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors, according to a USA Today report.
McCain, an Arizona senator, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona, in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of 50 landowners near the base, the newspaper reported on its Web site Thursday, citing public records.

Upset with a state law that restricted development around the base, SunCor representatives met with McCain's staff to lobby for funding, USA Today reported, citing the company's president at the time, John Ogden.

The Air Force later paid SunCor $3 million for 122 acres near the base -- three times its assessed value and twice the military's estimated value, the newspaper said.

Of course this isn't the first time John McCain has helped provide a windfall for SunCor Development, a company headed by Steven Betts, who also happens to be a Trailblazer for McCain's presidential campaign. But thank God for that clear record of never doing favors for anyone.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/291763613/701

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THE WEBB BLITZ.

post from Ezra Klein on 16 May 2008 01:52:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

Obama has just won the presidential nomination and will soon be turning at least a portion of his attention towards the search for a vice-president. One of the prime candidates is, certainly, James Webb, the tough-talking former marine who ended George[...]

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http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=05&year=2008&base_name
=the_webb_blitz

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Comments Paused

BY TAYLOR MARSH Okay, I’ve had it.I’ve been doing business and in and out all day.The comment section has gotten out of control. Calling anyone a "drug dealer" is unacceptable[...]

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http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27700

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McCain's "Vision" of Iraq, 2013

First let me say I'm glad to be back after an extended absence caused by the fact that I broke my right wrist. My thanks to John Kerry and M.J. Rosenberg for hitting back at President Bush's outrageous "appeasement" remarks in Israel, and John McCain's "me too" response to the whole affair.

I want to address a different McCain issue -- his "vision" of a stable, democratic Iraq in which most U.S. combat troops have been withdrawn, by 2013! How's that for a profile in courage?

McCain's new "vision" may sound like a kinder, gentler approach to folks who hear the sound bite version of his position, but it's actually more of same. The notion that a continued U.S. presence will contribute to a democratic evolution in Iraq doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The current government is not in control of the country; the U.S. has managed to put itself in the position of alternately arming Sunni and Shiite factions while
continuing to alienate many Iraqis who haven't taken sides in the chaotic violence that continues to plague the country; and growing numbers of Iraqis believe that the U.S. presence is exacerbating the violence, not containing it. So, absent a radical shift in U.S. policy and a breathtakingly fast political reconciliation among Iraq's factions, the notion of a "democratic Iraq" by 2013 is a pipe dream. At the same time that McCain is making
outrageous suggestions that Barack Obama is "soft" on terrorism, it appears that the Senator from Arizona is "soft" in his appreciation of reality. And its the disdain for the "reality-based" community that has gotten us into so much trouble during the Bush era. No matter how he may try to distance himself, when push comes to shove McCain and Bush are joined at the hip in their foreign policy philosophies.

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/tpmcafe-main/~3/291803192/

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These Are Our Friends

We have a long way to go in the policy debate on global warming. This is from a press release by[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/291797285/showDiary.do

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