Mickey Edwards, Co-Founder of Heritage Foundation, Voted Obama

NPR's Fresh Air with Terri Gross interviewed Mickey Edwards, Vice President of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Edwards is also a co-founder of the infamous Heritage Foundation.

Edwards stated without much prodding that he in fact voted for Obama. He saw many faults with the McCain campaign, but he also sees a huge flaw in the Gingerich model of party politics. He describes the recent tactics of congress bowing to the will of the president as dangerous and undemocratic. Having separate, balanced branches of government is key to making the country work.

Edwards other criticisms included a stern indictment of the anti-intellectualism promoted by the McCain-Palin campaign. The idea that we don't want a well-educated person to lead the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of human civilization is utterly ridiculous.

This is absolutely true. We need a well-educated person. John McCain thought that Iraq bordered Afghanistan and that Czechoslovakia still existed. Sarah Palin didn't even know Africa was a continent and not a country and threw temper tantrums because she didn't like reading press briefings. Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, taught Constitutional Law, and traveled Eastern Europe extensively with Richard Lugar.

In turbulent times, we need people who will stand firm with good economic plans and not try to divide the country with innuendo and lies.

Congratulations President Elect Obama.

Desperate Republicans

People at a Palin rally were actually so incensed by the racist, fear-mongering Republican rhetoric that they called for blood.

This is ridiculous. Why haven't people realized they are being duped by these statements? It's completely irresponsible to stir up people's hate and fear, and they have officially gone too far.

UPDATE: The real news is abuzz with this story. Fox "News" is crying foul that Newsweek didn't airbrush the blemishes out of Palin's cover photo. It's just further proof they are a tool of the RNC.

Obama on Terrorism and Palin's Word Games

Don't mock the Constitution. Don't make fun of it. Don't suggest that it's not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years.

Click here to read more from the Washington Post.

Sarah Palin's Record

Snopes has published a letter from Anne Kilkenny. She is a resident of Wasilla who knows the actual FACTS behind Palin's claims. Most of her claims are distortions, especially the claim of having more experience than Obama.

Palin Pain

Political Time again, this time, it's Sarah Palin.

This story from 365gay.com has got me riled and raised my level of ire such that I had to post on the old blog to get some sense of normalcy.

Apparently, she just took office on 1/1/2007. She has no national political experience and this is the first elected statewide office she has held. With McCain being 72 and in uncertain health, if he were elected and died in office, the honorable (?) Governor Palin would be president.

As much of a feminist as I am, I am less than enthused with this woman. Her record is less than comforting. I feel that this is a cheap ploy to appeal to the bigoted portion of the electorate who want to "keep the White House white." Many disenchanted Hillary voters may see this as an opportunity for a woman to get into the second highest political office in the country, but she is not anywhere near Hillary on the ideological continuum.

Obama really does stand for a change, other than that of race. Sarah Palin stands for nothing more than a Republican benchwarmer, someone who would be the mouthpiece of failed conservative politics. Few people had even heard of her until August 29.

Hopefully, few people will know her name on November 5.

Register and vote.

UPDATE:
There's another blogger in Alaska who goes into a LOT more detail about the real Sarah Palin.

Would we have had a Stan Palin as our VP pick? No. So choosing a woman because you think her gender will get votes is insulting.

The Nominee

On to November 4!

Thank heaven the primary is over. I have never been more excited about the election as I am right now.

I am also glad he is crediting Hillary for her tenacity and persistence. He has such an entrancing quality.

Elitism, Youth, and Novices

Obama won in Allen County. Even if the people I know did cross party lines to vote for Hillary, they were thwarted.

This map is also very interesting because it really shows where many of the state's urban centers are. Marion, Lake, Allen, St. Joseph, and Elkhart Counties; which are home to Indianapolis, Gary, Fort Wayne, South Bend, and Elkhart/Goshen respectively, went clearly to Obama. In Vanderburgh County, home to Evansville, Obama lost by just 1,293 votes.

Another interesting fact is that counties with major universities tended to go for Obama. Monroe County, home to IU Bloomington; and Tippecanoe County, home to Purdue both went to Obama.

Speaking of colleges, CNN's exit polls page had some fascinating statistics on how people with college educations voted, showing that people who graduated college favored Obama to Clinton 56% to 44% and those with post graduate education favored Obama 57% to 43%.

For the all-important Youth vote, the voters in the 17-29 demographic favored Obama over Clinton 61% to 39%. The 30-44 demographic (my fellow GenXers) favored Obama 56% to Clinton's 44%. Clinton captured the two-thirds of the votes from those over 60, which is really not a shock.

One thing of note is that neither candidate really got that many inspired new voters, according to the exit polls. Of the respondents, only 7% had never voted before, so it makes me think that a few voters may have been put off by the constant pandering by the candidates. But still, for those who did brave the primary process, 60% went for Obama and only 40% chose Clinton.

So you may wonder how my personal coin toss went. Well, let's just say that I live in an urban area and I am a college graduate. You do the math.

Obama on America's Race Quagmire

Allen County Democrats Think Too Small

There was no room for me at the proverbial table.

I got to the Grand Wayne Center at 5:30 and was waiting in the drizzle/mist for 25 minutes, but I was cutoff with five people in front of me.

What irks me is that the "volunteers" for Hillary were stopping people and making them sign a clipboard before letting people into the convention center. This practice delayed me from getting in because I let other people sign in before me. They of course got in.

This may be a sign from the universe that I should go for Obama. It reminds me that we don't really need a third term for Bill. Voting for Hill is kind of like perpetuating the dynasty of the Baby Boom generation.

The GWCenter did provide an overflow room of "audio only" access. I left and went to JK O'Donnell's with a couple friends who were also excluded.

I found a video of Obama's race speech, well Obama's campaigned e-mailed it to me. I'm going to post it next. It's very good. It talks about the straw man of "reverse racism." This man is amazingly astute.

Campaigning

Wow, we're not just a flyover state.

AP is reporting Obama will come to Indy saturday, but the time and place are TBA.

Isn't Panhandling Illegal?

My Gmail is overflowing with entreaties from Bill and Hillary Clinton, Terry McAullife, and Barack Obama.

It's enough to make a person crazy. And like most people would say, for me, that's an extremely short trip.

If I had money to give, I would have given it already. I'm not going to max out my Amex on a primary candidate, especially because I can't decide which one to choose. If you held the proverbial gun to my head right now, I would probably choose Obama. I think he is the stronger candidate for the majority of the vote in November at this point.

So I am not asking for a gun to be pointed at my head, just to be clear. Heaven knows I have enough problems without a death threat.

Whatever the outcome of the primary season, I hope that the candidates give me something more substantive on which to vote in the general campaign. I think McCain may very well be the worst thing for the country, a third GW Bush term. If not for his ideals, then for his scary, terrifying base. But that is not enough of a reason to vote Democratic, I need help people.

You may want money, but I want a platform on which to stake my vote.

The Audacity of Living History

I'm a convert to liberal politics. I grew up in a Republican household, but as environmental and social issues grew more mainstream in the 1990s, I reevaluated my presumed political beliefs. I voted for Bill Clinton in 1996. In 2000, I voted for Bush out of pure laziness. I didn't want to vote for Gore because I didn't think he had the stones to lead the nation. I still don't. Little did I know that Bush would lead to swelling government, a war funded on credit from China, and a national debt approaching 10 trillion dollars.

In 2004 I voted Kerry, and when it became clear on election night 2004 that he had lost Ohio, I smoked the last cigarette of my life, trying to use the nicotine buzz to distract myself from what I new would be the heartache of the next four years.

Now in 2008, it's highly likely that either an African-American or a woman will be the next President, something I scarcely dared to dream of during my dark closeted days of youthful leftist idealism.

Because the battle for the nomination will almost surely be more harrowing than the general campaign, I decided that I would make a concerted effort to pick the best candidate.

For years, I have admired Hillary Rodham Clinton for her work as a child advocate and then as a humanitarian First Lady. I consider myself a male feminist, so I was thrilled when she announced her candidacy and couldn't wait to vote for her. But then the notion of her 'inevitability' started permeating the public consciousness. This disturbed me. It began to seem that the Democrats didn't care about who may be the best, just who was wasting their time running against the Great Hillary.

A dear Republican friend told me that he was leaning toward Obama. He relayed that there was a populist movement circulating that was proving to be effective in winning people over from all points of the political spectrum.

I started investigating my options a little more. The knee-jerk reaction of "just vote for the b*tch" was beginning to fade as I realized that Hillary may not be able to win over as many people as someone who was a relative newcomer.

I looked online at voting records, platform statements, policy views and determined that I should probably find a more in-depth way to choose my candidate.

I decided that my best option was to get inside the heads of Hillary and Barack. One way I thought of to do this was to read the books each senator had written. I reserved them at the library and Hillary's became available first. I had unwittingly reserved the monstrous large-print edition. The nearly 900 page behemoth of a tome felt much like a burden both mentally and physically.

So began my odyssey into the life and times of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a simple bookish girl from the midwest, not to different from myself, who converted her political persuasion when she came of age. She detailed (and I do mean detailed) every period in her life. Her times at Wellesley made her into an advocate for social justice and civil rights, and her time at Yale lent her to be a congressional staffer investigating the Nixon debacle.
Her marriage took her to Arkansas and gave her a great insight into how the political system works. Her time in the White House took her around the world and helped make her one of the most admired Americans of the past several decades, if not within her own country, then on the World Stage. I finished the book after many fits and starts and finally returned it to the library.

Then I picked up the Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama. Interestingly enough, it was concise, better written, and more substantive than Hillary's saccharin glaze of her personal world view. For someone who is much younger than Hillary and has spent less time in national office, he is much more astute about people and politics. His dissertation on the myriad political problems facing the nation and the world were cogent and his proposed solutions were very much in step with my beliefs.

Obama's book is much more blatantly a campaign tool than Clinton's. Though neither openly asserts they will be running for president, Clinton's book seemed a lot more self-serving and apologetic of her past shortcomings. It seemed after reading both that Hillary was campaigning to win over tentative voters who may not like her but this is why thy should. Obama's book was much more open about his own political beliefs and proposed real solutions. His honest answers were unflinching, even though his stance would be open to refutation.

Overall, both books gave me a feeling that each candidate could be a great nominee, but only one was brave enough to put his positions out in front to be accepted or rejected by readers.

One drawback to Clinton's book is that it does not cover her future, but only her past. It also essentially stops after September 11 and doesn't even begin to touch the Iraq issue.

Obama has four to five years more challenges to answer, so he answers them. If Clinton were to have written her book at the same time, I think it's doubtful that she would have been brave enough to propose real change.

I think that with all things considered, my ballot will be checked for Obama come the May Indiana primary. As I write this, the entire primary process could give way in either direction, but after careful consideration, I would prefer the leader who is audacious enough to put his positions on the line in advance than one who apologizes for past mistakes.

Kal Penn- Obama Temple University voter registration event

UPDATE:
I like Kal Penn, I really really do, but his argument for Obama lacks any substantive issues for me. Margaret Cho was on after Kal, and she wasn't much better. Someone tell me something I don't already know.

Check your facts, people

My conservative family thinks that Obama is the devil incarnate because of lots of false innuendo.

Here's the place to check your facts.

Even after the ringing phone ad, I still consider myself undecided in the Democratic primary. However, the more people say about Obama that's distorted or outrightly false, the more I am inclined to support him.