Former President Bill Clinton speaks at the Democratic National Convention in support of Barack Obama for President.
“People the world over have always been impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”
That’s a line that will be remembered.
(Visit the videos page here at the DCDC web site to see more memorable speeches from the 2008 Democratic National Convention.)
Outstanding editorial in yesterday’s Daily Star by Cary Brunswick, on the subject of that tacky cover published by the New Yorker last month.
I was shocked not by the message itself, because we’ve already heard too many racists and religious fanatics espouse their fear-mongering accusations about Obama’s middle name and American loyalties. There’s been plenty of such paranoid talk.
No, I was surprised and saddened to see a legitimate neo-liberal magazine feeding that paranoia. The drawing’s intent obviously was satire, but the impact on many people will not be.
It would be a sad, sad commentary on the people of these United States of America if, after all this time and all the water under the bridge, we were still so primitive that we couldn’t bring ourselves to vote for a candidate just because of his race.
A lot of people, if you talk to them, will tell you that we Americans are past all that. But, of course, the McCain campaign and their sympathizers are trotting out the old stereotypes and race baiting and religion baiting (inaccurate religion baiting, since Mr. Obama is not a Muslim … and it shouldn’t matter, even if he were). They wouldn’t be doing that stuff if they didn’t have reason to believe it might work.
Did you think the Karl Rove style of political campaigning had fallen by the wayside, just because the man himself left the White House in disgrace? Of course not … not among Republicans!
Let’s just hope that they’re wrong. I don’t know about you, but I would like to have a better opinion of my fellow citizens than that.
So, have you been whining lately?
I know I have. I live in a rural community full of working class families desperately trying to make ends meet. Nothing here is close to anything else (as is the case with most rural communities), so folks are getting killed at the gas pump.
Lots of farmers, so some folks are getting doubly killed at the gas pump.
It’s a Northeastern rural community, which means its going to be pretty cold here in a few months and we still heat most of our homes with heating oil. Which means a lot of families are going to be getting triply killed by those insanely high fuel prices.
And then there’s the price of food. We have a bunch of regional and national chain supermarkets here, which means a lot of what is sold is not locally sourced. And that means our food prices are not any lower than anybody else’s. (I’ve always thought that people who live around farms ought to eat better than anybody else in the country but, alas, that is not the case.)
The local manufacturing plants are cutting jobs. There is nothing here that remotely resembles a real push to develop the local economy and certainly no organized effort to encourage and support local small businesses.
Whine, whine.
(Pause for musical interlude … )
It must be nice to be Phil Gramm, with the sort of income that let’s you call the rest of us hallucinating whiners. It must be real nice.
Technorati Tags: politics, 2008 presidential campaign, economy, Phil Gramm, John McCain, Barack Obama
This year, we’re looking at the real possibility — probability — of giving Governor Patterson the luxury of Democratic majorities in both the Assembly and the Senate to work with.
There are more reasons for that than the fact that, as Democrats, we’d like to elect Democrats.
As New Yorkers, we want to see a real effort at reforming the way things are done in Albany.
Check out this video, to get a crash course in how things happen in our state capital:
