Late last week, Newt Gingrich delivered a curious, under-reported speech at the American Enterprise Institute. He called it, “Answering the Obama Challenge”, and it was framed as a response to Barack Obama’s historic speech about race. (Video and transcript available here. My emphasis.) Segregation was a horrible institution imposed by force by the state. It ruined the lives of people, it crippled their futures, it was a terrible injustice, and it is totally authentic to be...

Via memeorandum comes the first general election ad of the season. America, meet John McCain — war hero, former POW, and patriot extraordinaire: No doubt we will all know his Navy serial # (624787) by heart before this is all done… and why not? He was a hero indeed; I, for one, admire his service and courage enormously. And he’s gonna need all those laurels to support his position on the Iraq war. (Good luck with that.) And while he could have run this ad without subtly targeting...

Angela Winters’ earlier post on Barack Obama’s speech this morning has generated some wonderful discussion. I’m enormously grateful for those thoughtful comments, since I’m truly not an economy expert. (I’d describe it as barely literate…) But there was also a bit of buzz before the speech, centered up on Mayor Bloomberg’s introduction of Obama. Is an endorsement in the offing? Or (even more politically affecting) is there the possibility of an Obama-Bloomberg...

ABC is running a doozy of a story (with video) about now-retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright. There’s been quite a flurry of these in the last couple of days, but the kickback from this one, I think, is going to be massive. For instance: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003...

My inbox this morning was full to the brim with notes from people sharing election results. The typical email started off with, “I’m so sorry, but it looks like Hillary won Texas…” I’m sorry, too. But sadness about the Texas primary results isn’t the overriding emotion this morning. What I feel, rather, is a tremendous and uplifting sense of community. I talked to hundreds of people in my precinct yesterday — so many that my voice is gone this morning....

As Joe wrote in a prior post, it looks as if Hillary Clinton’s embrace of negative campaigning is working. When tomorrow comes, if Hillary Clinton has taken Ohio (as I expect she will), and come close in Texas (which I also expect), then I’m certain she’ll declare her intention to continue her campaign to Pennsylvania and beyond. For her supporters, this is no doubt very exciting… but personally, I’m relieved that I’m not a partisan Democrat. If I were, I’d...

Iran’s president doesn’t appear to have had anything new to say during his visit to Iraq: BAGHDAD – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed U.S. accusations that his country is training extremists and demanded that the Americans withdraw from Iraq. My first reaction was that his opinion on the matter isn’t the one that counts. If it were the Iraqi government saying that the US should leave, though, that would be another situation entirely. However, I...

In response to an article today in the Times of London, blogger Jeralyn at TalkLeft writes that she doesn’t feel comfortable with what she knows about Barack Obama, and that if he wins the Democratic nomination, she’ll “be voting for him with [her] fingers crossed”. (My own response to the Times article is here.) Here on TMV, our own Holly has similarly given voice to concerns, and even gone so far as to write that if Obama is the nominee, she’ll be voting for McCain. I...

Barely a day after The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill put out an article about Barack Obama’s position on private military contractors, Hillary Clinton has signed onto a bill banning their use: “Washington, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today that she has cosponsored legislation to ban the use of Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq. Presumably she thinks she sees an exploitable opening in the Obama position. From The Nation: “If Barack Obama...

Continuing the unhelpful theme of “just stop saying this stuff”, the RNC has chastised its terrified Tennessee representatives: (CNN) – Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan formally denounced Thursday the Tennessee Republican Party’s use of Barack Obama’s full name in a recent press release questioning the Illinois senator’s commitment to Israel. “The RNC rejects these kinds of campaign tactics,” RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said in a statement....

One of the more disturbing moments in Tuesday night’s debate was when Tim Russert pinned the candidates down on NAFTA — specifically, on holding the “opt-out” hammer over the heads of Canada and Mexico to renegotiate terms. Here’s the “button-up” from Russert to Clinton: MR. RUSSERT: But let me button this up. Absent the change that you’re suggesting, you are willing to opt out of NAFTA in six months? SEN. CLINTON: I’m confident that...

During the debate last night, it was obvious that the moderators were focused (almost obsessively) on getting their questions answered. All by itself, that made the entire event much different from previous debates, and at the general level, they should be commended for it. It’s been frustrating in the extreme to hear candidates wander off on tangents, and never get called back to the initial point. Furthermore, I felt that the debate format, and most of the questions (yes, even the silly...

I showed up a few minutes early yesterday to pick up Adorable Child from a birthday party, and as has happened with nearly every adult encounter in the last week, another parent and I began talking about the primary election. While people eddied about us (including an entire family decked out in Obama t-shirts), our dialogue ran along now-familiar lines: he watched the Democratic debate in Austin last week; he still isn’t sure he’s fully informed; he’s leaning toward Obama. Having...

Iran’s seizure of 15 British naval personnel has analysts and pundits spinning in circles. Were they trying to influence the U.N. Security Council? Are they trying to “reassert their political and military relevance” in the Persian Gulf area? Perhaps they’re trying to leverage public opinion — in this case, against Tony Blair — by taking hostages to underscore that those sailors wouldn’t have been at risk if they weren’t engaged in an unpopular war. That...

Ben Smith’s apology at The Politico for having announced that John Edwards would suspend his presidential campaign underscores both the new power — and pitfalls — of this Brave New Era of communications and media. In spite of Ben’s reasonable, understandable explanation about sources, later test results, etc., the underlying reality is that the rapid-fire, get-it-out-first nature of the internet played a role in putting a false story out there. This “race for a scoop”...

From the comments on a NOLA post this weekend: In the mean time, half the state is losing their insurance. Mine got canceled this week…because I’d held it for under three years. I could feel wisps of steam starting to waft from my ears when I read that. That’s a reason to cancel someone’s policy???? Is that legal? Evidently, M (the commenter) had merely received her letter before Da Po’ Boy: Today’s insurance company frustration post was inspired by this letter...

Can somebody explain to me why, exactly, nationalization has seemingly become The Vehicle for a healthcare system? There are a number of interesting state initiatives under consideration (or in the fledgling stages of implementation), and frankly, that’s about as wide an umbrella as I think can be efficiently managed. I agree that the healthcare crisis is an enormous problem. I’m very interested in proposals and solutions — but I cannot get behind any plans that rely on the...

The number of fantasies that have been indulged over the course of this nation’s psychotic race-relations history is quite amazing, and David Ehrenstein’s op-ed in today’s LA Times merely gives voice to yet another: that white people need benign, unreal black role-players because they are both guilty about (and for) — and afraid of — the reality. Unfortunately, he’s based his conclusions about “Obama the Magic Negro” on the most unreal of all institutions:...

Just the other day, Dear Husband (DH) was lamenting the paucity of specifics, in either policy or platform, from the presidential candidates thus far. Via the NY Times, Hillary has come to his rescue — and in the process, she’s sent any number of folks over the edge, leaving me to conclude that everyone’s somehow lost sight of the fact that whatever the situation in Iraq is today, it will be substantially different by the time we have a new president. More on this here.

The other day, in response to a Washington Post article about the Myth of the Middle, I wrote that without the moderates, our hyper-partisan political environment was going to kill the country. We’ve hit gridlock, which is fine, except there are a number of issues that require action, and if nothing is done about them, the country’s in big trouble. Obviously, I’m not the only person who sees this problem, as David Broder writes in today’s WaPo (my emphasis): It was not nostalgia...

When King Solomon was faced with two women claiming the same baby, he offered to cut the baby in half so that each claimant could have part of the child. The real mother, of course, was willing to give up the baby rather than see it die. What if there had been a thousand claimants, and none of them had been willing to preserve the baby over their own interests? Obviously, that motherless baby would have died — just like southeastern Louisiana’s coastal region. My (fairly long) post on...

It seems that farmers in the Pueblo County, Colorado area are having some problems finding workers to pick crops. In spite of offering up to $9.60/hr, things are bad enough that crops either rotted in the fields last fall, some farmers are planning to plant less (or not at all) — or they’re going out of business altogether. So how do you feel about farmers contracting with the state’s Department of Corrections for inmate labor? More at Polimom Says.

Little girls have always tried to model the styles and mannerisms of older girls (read: young women). It’s part of growing up, and as far as I know, it always has been. So what’s different between the little girls of yesteryear and today? And can we really blame dolls? More here.

The risk that New Orleans might not recover from Katrina was always there. Even before the levees ever gave way, the city had horrific problems, and they’ve been magnified exponentially in the last 18 months. According to the NY Times, people in today’s New Orleans are getting overwhelmed — by the crime, the spiralling costs of far-too-little available housing, a lack of planning, unbelievable red tape, inexcusible funding bottlenecks, pathetic leadership at all levels, the unimproved...

Finally, some good news to cheer the day (CNN): A Saudi wing of al Qaeda called for attacks on U.S. oil sources across the world, saying targets should not be limited to the Middle East and listing Canada, Venezuela and Mexico as U.S. oil suppliers. The threat appeared in the al Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula’s e-magazine, Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Holy War), which was posted on a Web site used by Islamist militants. “It is necessary to hit oil interests in all regions which...