Vantage Point

Last night I went to go see Vantage Point and what a great movie! Better than what I thought it would be. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I highly recommend it.

Could It Actually Be Happening?

Hillary Clinton is going to be at Rhode Island College on Sunday (about an hour from where I live) and if I can find a friend, I am going. Heck, even if I can't I will probably go. I know the majority of you do not like her but I don't care. I am so personally invested in this, it is major for me.

The Obama Delusion

The Obama Delusion
By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- It's hard not to be dazzled by Barack Obama. At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken.

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

The subtext of Obama's campaign is that his own life narrative -- to become the first African-American president, a huge milestone in the nation's journey from slavery -- can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will, intelligence and energy. "It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white," he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.

But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:

-- Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).

-- Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.

-- Expand the child care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and "double spending on quality after-school programs."

-- Enact an "energy plan" that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a "green energy sector."

Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they're standard goodie-bag politics: something for everyone. They're so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing him of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama's "universal health plan," the odds of enacting his full package are slim.

A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.

Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."

Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees -- shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama's main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.

Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscurity. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/...a_delusion.html

In Politics, If You Have To Ask, It Isn't Over

In Politics, If You Have to Ask, It Isn't Over
By Susan Estrich

LOS ANGELES -- How do you know?

People ask that all the time. How do you know when you're in love? How do you know when you're not in love? How do you know when it's over?

The answer is always the same. You know when you know. If you have to ask, the answer is, not yet.

That's the answer to the question of whether the Democratic race is over.

Not yet.

Races end when a candidate puts down his hand, or her hand, or when the people who would never endorse while there was still a contest endorse, when all the money is flowing in one direction, and the only question is when and not if.

That is, plainly, what is happening on the Republican side. The first President Bush is endorsing. All the former candidates have endorsed. The arithmetic works only one way. The fat lady is singing, whether former Governor Huckabee chooses to listen or not.

The Democratic side is another story. Has Obama got momentum? Yes. But this is a race that has been curiously immune to moment, and downright perverse when it comes to predictions.

Could Hillary still win? She could. The delegate count as of the weekend stood at 1280 for Obama and 1218 for Clinton. By most people's logic, that looks like a tie. Add in Florida and Michigan, and one way or another, there will be delegates from those states at the National Convention, and Hillary is actually ahead. So how can it be over?

Once you declare a firewall, it needs to hold. Hillary has named the Big Three. She has to win Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania - and win them in a commanding enough way to give her credibility with the still-unpledged superdelegates and spread some doubt among opinionmakers and media types who are itching to crown Obama.

IF she does that, and, of course, that's an "if," the rest is doable. The battle for superdelegates is the kind of fight the Clintons excel at -- not only because Bill Clinton may be the hardest man in the world to say no to (politically, I mean), but also because this is where 35 years of favors and chicken dinners and contributions get paid off.

Sure, loyalty won't lead many people to back a loser. If Hillary loses Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania, all the rubber chicken in the world won't bring her the votes of the people who have to run with her in the fall. But so long as the contest is as even as it is now, there will be plenty of Clinton people arguing that the lesser-known candidate is a bigger risk than the better-known one, that experience is what it takes to take on John McCain, and yes, that debts must be paid.

The fact that Harold Ickes, Hillary's chief delegate counter and one of the Democratic Party's long-time rules junkies (he got me hooked back in 1980), has now changed his tune on seating delegations from Florida and Michigan should tell you how the Clinton people see this playing out. One way or another, every state ends up with delegates on the floor, no matter what the party threatens in advance.

The question is how they get there, or in this case, according to what vote they get apportioned. The Clinton people will argue that the only fair thing is to apportion them based on the votes that were actually cast in the admittedly verboten primaries. The Obama people, who are specialists in caucuses, will argue that they should be picked by the state parties, or by caucuses, or by some other procedure that Hillary hasn't already won.

Who wins? Believe me, this isn't a question of principle. It's all politics, and it will depend both on how well Hillary does between now and then, and on how much support she has on the Democratic National Committee.

Technically, the decision could be made in the first instance by the DNC, and then challenged (or affirmed) by the Credentials Committee to the Convention, and the Convention itself.

The composition of the Credentials committee is based on the division of pledged delegates to the convention, which doesn't tell you anything yet, and if it's left to the convention reviewing the Credential Report, then it's pledged delegates plus superdelegates minus the Michigan and Florida delegations, who don't get to vote on their own challenges. Which is to say, again, who knows?

Whoever wins, wins. That's how politics works. But no one has won yet.

Stay tuned. Believe me, this kind of race is much more fun to watch than to wage. More sleep, too.



http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/...ave_to_ask.html

Dream Songs

Name songs with Dream(s) in the title.



House Of A Thousand Dreams - Martina