So we all know that Cindy McCain is loaded. She’s an heir to the Anheuser Busch fortune and has millions upon millions. I love how the McCains & Clinton’s have 10-100X the millions that Obama has and he’s the elitists. Whatever.

Because Cindy has so much money, I can understand that she doesn’t know exactly all of her investments, but she should have gone over them with her husband’s campaign people when he decided to run for President or at least when he got the nomination. After the way the Clinton’s investments and Obama’s tax returns were made media meat, she can’t say she didn’t expect it. Whether its fair or not is not the issue. It was coming and she should have known.

So either she looked and didn’t care or didn’t care to look. Because it wasn’t until an AP Reporter pointed out to her that she has holdings in the Sudan that she decided to sell them off. Cindy McCain Sells Sudan-Related Investments - The Huffington Post. This while her husband has been a critic of the violence there and has advocated for international financial sanctions against Sudan. Cindy’s funds were worth more than $2 million; not a lot to her, but enough to be noticed by the press and to matter to people very concerned about the issue and hypocrisy of candidates.

Cindy has been much of a non-issue to me in this campaign, but now I call SUSPECT and want to know why she is still refusing to release her tax records. Why is she better than Michelle Obama & Bill Clinton? What else might one find?

China seems to be coming under heavy pressure with the world leaders threatening to keep away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this summer. The latest on the list is Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations. The Independent newspaper describes this “as capping an extraordinary week of public relations disasters for the Chinese government as it struggles to contain international anger over its policies towards Tibet and Sudan.”

“Yesterday, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing lashed out at the United States Congress for passing a resolution on Wednesday urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama. ‘It is confusing black with white and is vicious-minded of certain members of the US House of Representatives to not only fail to condemn the attacks, smashing, looting and arson in Lhasa … but rather to point the spear at the Chinese government and people.’

“Mr Brown (British PM) would be among world leaders not attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is also said to be considering staying away, while Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had earlier made it clear she would not attend the opening. In the US, all three candidates for the White House, including John McCain, the Republican nominee, have urged President George Bush to decline the invitation.”

More here…

To read the history of Olympics protests…please click here.

Meanwhile Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama does not advocate a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese crackdown in his homeland, but says it is for the individual leaders to decide whether to attend the Games. ”I basically wish that their (China’s) world event should take place smoothly.” He said his main message to China was ”We are not against you. And I’m not seeking separation.”

Chinese President Hu Jintao told the visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: “Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem. It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland.”

Mr Hu repeated China’s position that it was ready to meet the Dalai Lama, but only if he met certain pre-conditions, such as desisting from trying to “split the motherland”, “incite violence” and “ruin the Beijing Olympics”.

So if both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama are “willing to meet” to sort out the problem what’s the hitch? Why don’t the world leaders confront both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama and decide on the date and venue for the meeting? Why wait?

China has put up an interesting/informative Olympics Games website…click here.

The degree to which Beijing yearns for international approval in its handling of the Olympic Games cannot be underestimated, which is likely the reasoning behind the timing of the recent unrest in Tibet. In this tongue-lashing of actress and human rights activist Mia Farrow published just before the unrest in Tibet broke out and after Steven Spielberg withdrew from the Olympic Games, the author suggests that the West has fundamental misunderstanding of China which requires Chinese to speak up for themselves and engage in ‘heated debate with people like Mia Farrow.’ In this op-ed which refers to an article in The Wall Street Journal legally unavailable to any of the readers of this state-controlled magazine, Shan Ren-ping writes for China’s Global Geographic Times:

“The article written by Mia Farrow confuses right and wrong and relentlessly discredits China, but even more frightening, it has begun to change the atmosphere of public opinion in the West. … She has wantonly brainwashed the public’s thinking by seizing the moral high ground. … Now is the time to expose the weaknesses of Mia Farrow and her ilk. They cannot be permitted to wantonly brainwash public opinion. This is not only unfair to China but to the entire world - and especially to Mr. Spielberg.”

By Shan Renping

Translated By Mark Klingman

February 29, 2008

Global Geographic Times - People’s Republic of China - Original Article (Chinese)

For the Beijing Olympic Games, the West seems to be showing us two completely different attitudes. On the one hand, most Western countries have given the Beijing Games a positive evaluation and oppose the “politicization of the Games.” But on the other, some non-governmental organizations and members of civil society still clamor to resist the Beijing Olympic Games.

Among these people, one cause of dissatisfaction is that they believe China hasn’t acted played a positive role in resolving the Darfur problem. So despite the fact that to date, the leaders of over sixty countries have announced that they will attend the Beijing Olympics; and opposing the “politicization of the Games” has become the message of the mainstream of global public opinion - we cannot ignore the voices of average Western people in this matter - especially the negative voices.

Not long ago, American director Steven Spielberg resigned as art director for the Beijing Olympics. On the surface it seems as though he had no choice, and although there is no chance that this will affect the success of the Beijing Olympics - the act does tell us something of the Western misunderstanding of China.

It’s fair to say that for some time now, the director has been under tremendous political pressure. Last year, on March 28, the American actress Mia Farrow wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal with language that maliciously accused the Beijing Olympics with being the “Genocide Olympics.” This article was the first time that the Beijing Games and Sudan were hung on the same hook - and beside condemning China, she sought to persuade Spielberg.

She wrote: “That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the Games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg … to sanitize Beijing’s image.” Even more provocatively, she linked the Beijing Olympics to Spielberg’s own Shoah Foundation for Holocaust-remembrance which he founded in 1994, asking him to be aware that “China is bankrolling Darfur’s genocide.”

Mia Farrow’s article not only confuses right and wrong and relentlessly discredits China, even more frightening is that she has begun to change the atmosphere of public opinion in Western societies: the question of supporting the Beijing Olympic Games has become a moral issue. Once again, Spielberg’s resignation undoubtedly proves that the pressure of public opinion is very strong. It can be inferred that in the next five months, these same people will turn up the pressure on athletes and sponsors alike.

People like Mia Farrow think they have found China’s soft rib - that is, they believe they have found the most opportune place to apply pressure to China. They are wrong! In fact it is their proposed solution to the Darfur problem that is the real soft rib! Now is the time to expose the weaknesses of Mia Farrow and her ilk. They cannot be permitted to wantonly brainwash public opinion …

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of issues that involve the United States.

Was President Bush’s recent tour of Africa just a convenient and thinly-disguised attempt to whitewash an otherwise dismal foreign policy record? Mohammad Jafar Ahmed of Al-Khaleej of the United Arab Emirates writes, ‘By signing agreements and handing out donations to help combat disease at the end of his second term, Bush’s tour appeared to be an attempt to instill memories other than the American catastrophe in Iraq and the quagmire in Afghanistan.’

By Mohammad Jafar Ahmed

Translated By James Jacobson

February 22, 2008

United Arab Emirates - Al-Khaleej - Original Article (Arabic)

In his last months before leaving the White House, American President George Bush remembered of the “Dark Continent,” setting off on a six-day African tour starting in Benin, and moving on to Rwanda, Tanzania and Ghana, and ending today with a stop in Liberia.

Bush’s “farewell” tour, which is the second to Africa of his presidency, was meant to convince the world that he feels the suffering of this forgotten people, presenting himself as an advocate who wants to help them overcome the effects of war, conflict and disease. But perhaps the true purpose was to rescue a legacy tainted with the blood of thousands in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan - the result of his wars and unlimited support of Zionist aggression, in addition to the sanctions he has imposed on a number of countries that have opposed his policies.

The tour was striking in that it didn’t include the real hot spots of conflict on the Dark Continent, notably Sudan, home of the Darfur crisis, as well as Kenya, where the turmoil that has embroiled the nation since the recent elections continues, to say nothing of Chad and Somalia.

Bush’s five-country selection prompts anyone interested Africa’s difficulties to question the meaning and true objectives of his tour and whether it was for political or economic purposes. As Darfur is one of the major preoccupations of the West, particularly in the United States, which kept the crisis on the international agenda until it reached the U.N. Security Council, Sudan can be considered the greatest failure of Bush’s tour; similar to the way Palestine was the great failure after his last Middle East tour, where as result of American cover for “Israeli” crimes, hundreds have been martyred in Gaza and the West Bank.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with out continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.

What do the Olympic Games and Steven Spielberg have to do with the U.S. elections? It all has to do with the calender. According to Pierre Rousselin, deputy editorial page editor of France’s Le Figaro, The rage of Steven Spielberg is not in itself conclusive. But it’s significant for what it announces. Spielberg is Hollywood. And Hollywood is an arm of the Democratic Party … The Chinese have no luck with the calendar. The Olympics open on August 8th, shortly before party conventions in the United States, when the political temperature across the Atlantic will be running very high.’

By Pierre Rousselin, Translated By Sandrine Ageorges February 15, 2008, France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
The Olympic Games is the greatest event of global sport and one of the human activities that can best bring together the races and the continents. This summer the event is taking place in Beijing, and marks China’s return as one of the world’s major powers. A boycott of the event would be like rejecting a quarter of humanity. Read the rest of this entry »

BBC journalist Matt Frei interviewed George W. Bush, who defends US policy in Darfur and his own ’seminal decision’ (sic) not to commit troops to Darfur (BBC transcript). I can’t upload the 15 minute video here, but you can watch it here or read a summary here.

Grim as most of the subjects the two of them canvassed were, and are, several of the things he said evoked mocking laughter or incredulous giggling. But other parts just made me shake my head in disbelief. Still others made me feel vaguely ill. Others evoked the usual helpless rage. The worst part is that I can still see, in a way, why people the people who liked him liked him, and why some might like him still. It was kind of an emotional roller coaster.

Among other things that would have upset me if I thought there was a chance of his persuading anyone, he once again misrepresented the position of those who oppose torture. He seems to think it’s because we don’t see terrorism as a threat instead of because we think (1) terrorism is morally wrong; and (2) a violation of international law. I oppose waterboarding and all forms of torture because, among other reasons, I consider it a cowardly and fearful response. Furthermore, my religious views, unlike, apparently, George W. Bush’s, require me to view it as a moral issue on which no compromise is possible. Even if I weren’t religious, I’d still believe in the Kantian precept of acting as if your own behavior would become the law for others. There is actually a certain rough common sense in the injunction to “do unto others, etc.” If you expect or demand that others comply with the highest standard of behavior, social, military, or otherwise, you have to set it yourself.

So I’d like to assure Bush and all hardliners and advocates of “harsh interrogation methods” that I am indeed afraid of terrorists and believe in the threat. But I am not a coward.

“We’re a nation of law,” Bush said, after explaining why he opposed the waterboarding ban. One law for us, another for the rest of the world, I suppose—at least if you assume that we wouldn’t put up with having the interrogation methods he wishes to preserved used against our own.

One of the things about Bush I will miss (in the way you miss a car alarm when it stops shrilling) is his way of walking up to, around and alongside what he means, so he’s always only ever in the general area. Like when he said that America “believe[s] in the human condition.” What?

Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever you think about Jimmy Carter’s presidency, it’s hard not to have great respect for the post-presidential work he’s now doing in Africa.

Former President Jimmy Carter has never been known to flinch from controversy — and he has sparked more than a few. He has become an irritant to a host of Presidents who followed him. Above all, he speaks his mind.

Now he has shouted it in Darfur — this time for a cause and in circumstances that many of his critics would likely applaud:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security officials who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet representatives of ethnic African refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound.

Carter was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security services interrupted.

“You can’t go. It’s not on the program!” the local national security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as “The Elders.”

“We’re going to anyway!” an angry Carter retorted, telling security officers they didn’t have the authority to stop him.

As a growing crowd gathered around the former president, Carter’s U.S. security detail and his African Union escort tried to ease tensions. Carter later agreed to a compromise by which tribal representatives would be brought to him at another location later Wednesday.

“I’ll tell President Bashir about this,” Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

But then what will happen?

ALSO OF INTEREST:
Sudan Peace Protocols: A Statement by President Jimmy Carter
Statement of Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s to the U.N. Human Rights Council
SUDAN (TV script)
Coalition for Darfur

Anybody can come up with reasons for Israel to turn away the Darfur refugees. Anybody could have (and did) come up with reasons to turn back Jewish refugees in the Holocaust. Avoiding one’s responsibilities to the victims of genocide is easy, and easier to justify. But Jews have always been insistent that nation’s were wrong to do so. We’ve staked a significant amount of moral credibility on the issue. It’s time to put our money where our mouth is.

And I guarantee you, if we don’t–nobody will be there for us in our hour of need either. If even the past victims of genocide can justify turning away their contemporary peers, the precedent set for another “again” will be virtually unassailable. We cannot set the table for the next generation of bystanders. Ours is a people of rescuers, not watchers.

Israel ought to reverse its disgusting position expatriating Darfur refugees back to Egypt. There is no excuse for it, a majority of Knesset members on the left and the right are against it, and it is a massive betrayal of the core values that formed Israel’s existence. Sending back these refugees to a country in which they face well-known discrimination, violence, and brutality is more than embarrassing. It’s criminal.

Talk about Chutzpah!

Sudan: Jews behind Darfur conflict

Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur” last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper.

Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week.

A journalist from Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: “Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?”

“The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning,” the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by “friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict.”

“Are these Jewish groups supporting (the rebels) financially?,” the interviewer from Okaz asked Hussein.

“Yes, they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles,” Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using “all means to fuel these conflicts.”

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false, and said: “We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or rebel actions.”

Also

Several days ago, Sudan’s Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused “Israeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their country.”

He added that his ministry was “very confused” by Sudanese citizens who came to Israel.”

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera television: “We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children. We came here to look for a better place.”

Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.

During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.

Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.

One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.

In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: “Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur’s genocide?”

A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.

She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.

If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.

Cross-posted from my blog

Joschka Fischer, over at The Guardian’s blog, has written a good — if slightly dull — post calling for the EU to take more aggressive action against the Sudanese government.

…measures should target the Sudanese government where it hurts most: revenue and foreign investment inflows into Sudan’s petroleum sector, and supply of goods and services to that and associated sectors. The EU and its member states’ governments must enact legislation to ban companies based in their countries from direct involvement in Sudan’s petroleum sector and in industries related to it.

Moreover, an investigation into the offshore accounts of Sudanese businesses affiliated with the National Congress Party, the ruling majority party in Khartoum, should be launched, paving the way for sanctions against the regime’s commercial entities, which form the main conduit for financing its Janjaweed proxies in Darfur.

Such targeted sanctions would affect the power and privileges of the key players in this crisis. By imposing them, Europe would finally take a real step towards stopping the killing in Darfur and extending meaningful help to its people.

Fischer’s right, of course. The fact that the EU hasn’t done much on the issue of Darfur is shameful. Unfortunately, the EU just can’t be relied on to stand up for human rights. The problem is due to the structure of the organization. Most foreign policy decisions in the EU are made by consensus. That means that if one of the twenty-seven member states disagrees with the views of the majority, they can veto the whole measure. This has resulted in the organization’s foreign policy being effectively led by its most reluctant member.

Take Russia. Despite attempts by the EU to act against Putin’s increasingly undemocratic policies, Germany has stepped in the way of such efforts. Concerned that the flow of oil from Russia might be cut off, Germany has repeatedly rejected measures to do anything about the issue.

The Darfur case is very similar. I’m not sure which one of the states is holding up action against Sudan, but at least one of the member states has surely stepped in to stop it. So, while I want to rely on the EU to push for human rights in countries like Sudan, I just don’t think we can. Until they reform their decision-making procedures, they will continue to be impotent on human rights issues.

Last Friday, the Florida Senate voted unanimously in favor of a bill that would require divesting pension funds from companies doing business with the petroleum sector in Iran and the government of Sudan. If passed next week by the House and signed by Governor Crist, Florida would be the first state to legislate divestment of pension fund holdings from Iran. The bill affects more than 40 companies, including Royal Dutch Shell. The state pension fund now has more than $130.6-million invested in companies connected to Sudan and $833-million invested in targeted businesses affiliated with Iran.

Celebrities including Elton John, Mick Jagger, Bob Geldof, George Clooney and Mia Farrow have appealed to the international community to do more to protect the civilians of Darfur, the province of Sudan where 200,000 have died in four years of war, and millions have lost their homes.

This appeal comes from these celebrities to mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the conflict, and coincides with the Global Day of Darfur being observed by Britain and 33 other countries.

“Though thousands of people across five continents will today urge their leaders to ‘do something’ about Darfur, few leaders can agree on what that ’something’ is,” reports The Independent.

“The US, which is alone in labelling the conflict ‘genocide’, is preparing to increase its sanctions on Sudan. Britain is talking up the idea of a no-fly zone, but one non-British Western diplomat in Khartoum was quick to point out that this was being suggested only by Mr Blair.

“So far, though, the outside world is just talking - not acting. Numerous UN resolutions urging action remain unenforced. A no-fly zone was even agreed in 2005, but was never implemented.”

More here…

Another report states: “What began as a rebellion by three non-Arab tribes against perceived marginalisation by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government has escalated into a complex multi-layered conflict.

“There are Arabs fighting alongside the rebels and Africans siding with the government. Arab tribes are fighting other Arab tribes - some are even fighting themselves. Desertification has increased tensions, between everybody, as tribes fight to gain control over precious water points.

“If it was ever as simple to describe the conflict as a ‘genocide’ of black Africans by an Arab government - and few analysts in Sudan believe it was - it certainly is not now.

“Sudan’s government is arming any group that is prepared to attack anyone connected with the rebels, be they African or Arab. In some cases they have even armed both sides of the same mini-conflict. It is less about ethnic cleansing and more about power. Khartoum, argue some analysts, may not even want the war to end.

” ‘This government has always had a crisis,’ said Dr Madawi Ibrahim, a Darfurian expert with close ties to the rebel movement. ‘You keep people busy with a crisis’.”

From The Times:

Britain and America threatened yesterday to impose new sanctions on Khartoum after a United Nations report accused Sudan of disguising its military planes and helicopters as UN aircraft and using them to attack villages in Darfur. The confidential report says that military aircraft were painted white — a colour usually reserved for the UN — and used to ferry arms to the janjawid militia, for reconnaissance flights and bombing missions.


The report’s most astonishing revelation was the use by the Sudanese armed forces of white-painted military aircraft in Darfur. On March 7 a photograph was taken of an Antonov AN26 aircraft on the military apron of al-Fasher airport, the Darfuri regional capital. Guarded by soldiers and with bombs piled alongside, the plane was painted white and has the initials “UN� stencilled on its upper left wing. Another Sudanese military aircraft was disguised in the same manner. The report said that white Antonovs were used to bombard Darfur villages on at least three occasions in January.

A similar ploy was employed to conceal the identity of three Mi171 military helicopters which were painted white. The report said that from a distance the aircraft could be mistaken for similar helicopters operated by the UN and peacekeepers.

Google Earth has updated its images of the Darfur region in Sudan in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of people living there. In partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google has published new, high-resolution aerial photographs of the area, showing destroyed villages, displaced people and refugee camps. In some places, the resolution is high enough to show the burnt ruins of individual houses.

Our linkfest offering readers a road map to interesting blog posts of varying viewpoints. Links do not necessarily represent views of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

Have We Just Seen “A Softer Gentler Iran?” Publius Pundit has a detailed answer 4 U.

Meanwhile, Are Pundits Using The Hostage Crisis For Political Agenda Gain? Oxblog’s Patrick Porter believes they are.

What Is It About Women Named “Monica?” Veteran newspaper editor, publisher and journalism teacher Robert Stein has some thoughts on the Bush administrations’ Monica problem.

What Liberal Critics Of Wal-Mart Are Missing: aTypical Joe gives a thoughtful take on the whole hot-button issue of Walmart and looks at it extensively. He offers a DIFFERENT TAKE on it than people on the left and right are used to reading. A small part of it:

But a funny thing happened on my way to ridicule - I gave it a second thought. I began to think of Wal-Mart from this side, the rural-resident side, of the Wal-Mart divide. With that second thought I realized the Wal-Mart divide is a reflection of the larger, even deeper, mars/venus gulf of culture and experience that divides city and country people. I realized that I live in that divide every day, and that I wish people would start listening to the country-side. Talk with them, not just about them, and certainly not for them.

But there’s a LOT MORE so read it in full.

The U.S. Support Of A Pakistani Militant Group Invading Iran has come under fire. TomDispatch looks at it and includes the controversial Noam Chomsky’s piece “If Iran Had Invaded Mexico” HERE. (This will be sure to spark lots of discussion in comments. Hold onto your seats..)

Has Hillary Clinton Failed An Important Big Test? Dick Polman (one of the best political writers in any universe) looks at Barack Obama Versus Hillary and concludes yes:

The plain truth is that the Clinton campaign has failed its first big test. The early ’07 goal was to blow Obama (and John Edwards) out of the water by demonstrating implacable money mastery. Instead, Obama in particular has served notice that the rookie is fully capable of slugging it out, over the long haul, with the Friends of Bill and the other well-wired inhabitants of Hillaryland. We don’t yet know officially that Obama has outraised Clinton in primary season money, but ABC News, citing inside sources, reported last night that he collected $23 million, and Clinton $20 million. Her campaign has declined to confirm or deny.

The bottom line is that, at least for now, she has lost the right to be considered the preemptive Democratic favorite.

And, indeed, Polman is correct. This seems to be the year of the un-preemptive preemptive. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that some pundits said John McCain seemed on his way to be the preemptive nominee? Perhaps he still is but he has to campaign now with a lot of body armor. And Giuliani? He was Mr. Up And Coming. But now on the GOP side Mr. Up And Coming seems to be Fred Thompson. This is actually enjoyable, because the ever-certain talking heads are more and more looking like sources of entertainment than people who can be relied on for predictions. Perhaps in this race anyone being crowned the likely “preemptive favorite” ought to run for cover, hire more staff and triple their campaign efforts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Defending her report of “large-scale international crimes”, Jody Williams tells the council: The credibility issue is “not about ours, it’s about yours.”