The more people see of him the more they like. Everywhere he goes he draws bizarrely large crowds. Washington votes along with three other states tomorrow and it's looking good for Barack (fingers crossed). Here's the latest from his visit to the Evergreen State:Huge crowd for Obama spills out of KeyArenaBy comparison, Clinton's rally drew "a capacity crowd of 5,000 on Thursday for a rally at Pier 30 on Seattle's waterfront, and 6,000 at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma on Friday."
Sen. Barack Obama rocked an overflow crowd at KeyArena on Friday in one of the biggest political rallies the state has ever seen. So many people showed up to catch a glimpse of Obama, police had to help keep the peace after thousands were shut out.
"I'm fired up. I'm ready to go," Obama said as he took the stage to a deafening roar from the
crowd of more than 18,000 inside the arena.
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KeyArena was filled to capacity hours before Obama took the stage. Some 3,000 people listened from an overflow area outside.
It was the latest in a string of huge rallies for Obama. In the week leading up to Super Tuesday, he drew monstrous crowds at most stops — including 14,000 in Boise, Idaho.
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If the crowds are any indication of what's to come in today's Democratic precinct caucuses, turnout should easily shatter the record 100,000 who showed up in 2004.
"We've got people coming out of the woodwork," said state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz. "The energy in this
state is the highest I've ever known it to be."
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Lines started forming at KeyArena before 6 a.m. for the 11 a.m. rally, and the crowd snaked through Seattle Center before the doors opened.
William Spiritdancer, of Seattle's Central District, pulled his four children — ages 7 to 14 — out of school to see Obama speak. The teachers were OK with it and wished they could attend, too, he said.
A meme is developing is that support for Obama is all emotion, fantasy, hysteria, etc. There's no question that the emotions behind Obama are powerful. And any fool can see why. His oratory does what oratory should. He is the greatest public speaker in American life since Reagan.
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But the strongest case for Obama is not emotional; it is as coolly rational as he is. I tried to express it in my "Goodbye To All That" essay. On the most critical issues we face - Iraq, the war against Jihadism, healthcare, and the economy - he makes more sense as a president than Clinton. And when you watch the knee-jerk opposition to him, I think it is actually more emotional and less rational than the support for him. Fear is more emotional than hope.
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There is no detail in her policy apparatus that isn't matched by Obama's. But you've heard a lot from me on this. Here's a video that shows a conservative cynic being slowly and rationally disarmed by the logic of young, shrewd voter.
A vote for Obama is a vote for reason over sentiment. Check it out:
Man Faces Child Abuse Charges After Home CircumcisionYa think?
DALLAS, N.C. -- Investigators say a man has been charged with child abuse in Caldwell County for circumcising his two infant sons with a utility knife. [emphasis mine]
Authorities said 32-year-old Johnny Eric Marlowe, a self-admitted polygamist, fathered children with his legal wife and another woman who lives in their home. One gave birth to a boy at their home in the rural Kings Creek community in November 2005, and the other gave birth to a boy there four months later.
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Marlowe had a total of 11 children with the two women. "Sick, he's got a sick mind,” a former neighbor said. “Anybody that would do that to their children -- there's something really wrong with them.”
Claiming he never called for the introduction of the Muslim system, Dr Rowan Williams claimed he wanted to "tease out some of the broader issues around the rights of religious groups within a secular state." In a statement on his website based on his controversial lecture in London last night, he added he had only used sharia as an example.What nasty bits? How about a good stoning for starters?
Dr Williams' comments, however, are likely to do little to stem the rising tide of anger from senior clergy. As public condemnation of his speech grew, some of his own bishops were calling for his resignation.
In an astonishing attack, one senior Church of England clergyman demanded he stepped down immediately and branded him "gullible."
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Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, said: "I am appalled that the head of the Church of England is advocating that parts of sharia law should be introduced into British law. The idea that you can have the moderate bits without the nasty bits coming along at a later time is naive."
But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities—joint conscience-keepers of this country—been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.These are disgusting incidents to be sure. Sickening. It's the kind of reprehensible, misogynistic crap that rabid redneck conservatives spouted in the 1990s. It was part of the reason I was such a staunch defender of the Clintons back then. Every moment they were in power was a rebuke to that kind of troglodytic idiocy.
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Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.
Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.
Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.
Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?
—blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys—though unlike them, he got reported on). Let’s get real. If he hadn’t campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.Now, this is just nonsense. It makes the suggestion that Bill is just out there on his own making silly comments and doing stupid things. Anyone who's watched the Clintons closely must know that they incredibly smart and calculating (in the positive and negative sense of the word) people. It just beggars belief to suggest that using Bill as was done between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries was not a decision that she had no part in. She is responsible for how her campaign is run. She is responsible for what her husband—a former president, a man with a large amount of prestige—does on her behalf during her campaign for president.
Goodbye to the phrase “polarizing figure” to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women’s movement that quipped, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” She heard us, and she has.This is exactly what many women I know don't like about her. Most women I've talked to are post second-wave feminists and know that they don't need to become a man to inhabit their power.
Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries’ history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power—granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our “land of opportunity,” it’s mostly the first pathway “in” permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.I don't know what she's talking about saying goodbye to American ignorance of history. Clearly she's been smoking something funny. We're as amnesiac as a summer day is long. . :-)
As for the “woman thing”? Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.Identity trumps all in the end. Ugh.
Internet political buzz super for democracyHat tip: Ben Smith at Politico
Facebook had its own "desk" in the ABC studios, where reporters were updating "hits" on pages all night long.
On MySpace, its rival social-networking site, some 50,000 viewers logged on to see a new Barack Obama music video by artist will.i.am in just a few hours' time.
Site reps chalked up record turnouts of youth voters in part to inspiring candidates, but also said "people-powered politics" played a huge role in youth involvement.
"Barack Obama is bigger on MySpace than U2. That's a pretty extraordinary thing," said Jeff Berman, senior vice president of public affairs.
What I really wanted to say to Chris Matthews
The women's movement is about free choice, self-determination and challenging a status quo that fails a lot of Americans, not just women. And it is not about going along. It's about transcending, about having the freedom to follow one's heart, about creating and pursuing new opportunities, and about the American dream being for all Americans.
Chris' gotcha-type question to me and the semi-criticism implicit in it -- that as a woman I have some biological obligation to unreservedly support whatever woman is running -- are exactly the sentiments I faced when I first started working for a woman's right to choose. If women who vote for men are traitors, then are men who vote for women also traitors? What about African-Americans who vote for whites? Or whites who vote for African-Americans?
Laying this guilt trip, this hypocrisy, on women -- saying that those women who don't vote for other women are turncoats -- is tantamount to saying that women who exercise independent thought haven't the right to do that either. Could there be a more anti-feminist contention?
Oh How We Forget, The Clintons Race Baited In ‘92
THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Democrats; Jackson Sees a ‘Character Flaw’ In Clinton’s Remarks on Racism
By R. W. APPLE JR.,
Published: June 19, 1992
Escalating his conflict with Gov. Bill Clinton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson charged today that in a clumsy bid for the backing of alienated white voters the presumptive Democratic nominee had “again exposed a character flaw.”
In a bitter rejoinder to Mr. Clinton, Mr. Jackson said in an interview that the Arkansas Governor had come to the Rainbow Coalition conference in Washington last weekend to “stage a very well-planned sneak attack, without the courage to confront but with a calculation to embarrass” him.
At the conference of Mr. Jackson’s coalition, the Governor denounced the rap singer Sister Souljah for having used racially inflammatory language in a newspaper interview, and he criticized Mr. Jackson for asking her to take part in the meeting.
By his choice of language today, Mr. Jackson, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988, rubbed an old sore and raised the specter of continuing conflict within the Democratic Party. Mr. Clinton has struggled for months to put the “character issue” behind him and in recent weeks has seemed to succeed. ‘Isolating Jackson’
Mr. Clinton’s “Machiavellian maneuver,” Mr. Jackson declared, was intended “purely to appeal to conservative whites by containing Jackson and isolating Jackson.”
"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."
“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”You know, just a nice little backhanded compliment.
"the Hispanic voter - and I want to say this very carefully - has not shown a lot of willingness to support black candidates."******
Religious police in Saudi Arabia arrest mother for sitting with a man
A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.
Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.…
The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.
Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.
“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.
“He said 'You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell'. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.
Dr. Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury. He also happens to be the first acknowledged gay man to hold that post. I've always liked the guy and what he stands for. But I think he's off his nutter on this issue. The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is "unavoidable" and that it would help maintain social cohesion. Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4's World At One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system. He says that Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.What the fuck is he thinking? We're fighting the much tamer (usually) Christian version of Sharia in this country and this guy wants to cede ground on the far more virulent Muslim version in the country that gave us the Magna Carta?!? I don't get it.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a short story in The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling about the adventures of a valiant young mongoose. The story is a favorite of Kipling fans and is notable for its frightening and serious tone. Some epic features (heightened prosaic style, songs to the hero) add to the standard typology of hero defeating villain. It has often been anthologised and has also been published more than once as a short book in its own right.
Synopsis. An English family, who have moved to a bungalow in the British Sugauli (former British sp. Segowlee) cantonment in Bihar State, India, discover a young mongoose half drowned from a storm and decide to keep it as a pet. The young mongoose, called Rikki-Tikki, soon finds himself confronted by two dangerous, murderous cobras, Nag (Hindi for "cobra") and his even more dangerous mate Nagaina, who had the run of the garden while the house was unoccupied. After that first encounter with the cobras, Rikki's first true battle is with Karait, a dust brown snakeling who threatens the boy (Teddy). Although Rikki is inexperienced and the snake, because of its deadly venom and small size, is an even more dangerous foe than a cobra, the mongoose defeats him.
The Vatican has reported a further dramatic fall in the number of Roman Catholic monks and nuns worldwide.
The Roman Catholic Church has an aging and diminishing number of parish and diocesan clergy and this latest fall is quite dramatic, our correspondent says.
The number of Catholic nuns worldwide declined by about a quarter during the reign of Pope John Paul, and this further drop shows that new recruits are failing to replace those nuns who die, or decide to abandon their vows, he adds.
My nascent political worldview was formed by those experiences: there was a progressive force in our country, and a reactionary one. The forces of reaction would stop at nothing, including murder, to stop progressive change. Of course I realized there was no connection between the three assassinations--except there was. There was something in the air, or rather under the surface, some dark unconscious collective force--the American shadow. Read the history of that time as prose, and this take on causality seems ridiculous, if not paranoid: given the three completely unconnected assassins--two of whom apparently acted alone--you have nothing more here than random coincidence. Read it as poetry, though, with the heart, and you understand there is no coincidence. Both views, of course, are true.
What happened then--the decapitation of the progressive liberal force in this country, just as it's next generation was reaching adulthood--has everything to do with Obama today. He's the dream deferred, the inheritor of myth. So the Grateful Dead will play for him on Monday, and I will vote for him on Tuesday, not to bypass something we Boomers started--because believe me, we did not start the great divide--but to finish the battle we began then and fulfill what was always, always our dream--the same dream that we are dreaming today, and that Barack and Michelle describe so eloquently every time they speak: justice, unity, freedom--not as abstract principles, but as real, on-the-ground, shared American realities. It's been a long time coming.…
The genius of Obama--and it is a spiritual genius--is he quiets that old nightmare. He lifts us beyond. He wakes us up, brings us together--the true opposite to Bush and Rove, who drove us deeper into drugged sleep and division, day by day. That was your point in "Goodbye to All That", and it was well said. But don't blame the Boomers--left or right--for a war that's been going on forever. And don't underestimate the sleeping giant we Boomers--especially we liberal Boomers--represent. We have not forgotten our dreams.
