Where’s the Outrage?

Senator Barack Obama opened his speech with a few strong words of support for Senator Ted Kennedy. It was very classy. Then, he drew out a long lead-up to stating that he has secured the majority of pledged delegates. You can read the official text but for the sake of brevity, here’s the lowdown:

• He thanked Senator Hillary Clinton and correctly stated that she has changed the political landscape for his kids and women everywhere.
• Obama said that the Republican primary was a contest to see who could out-Bush the other and that’s a contest that John McCain won.
• Obama began a long list of what change is. In the middle of that list, he took a swipe at President Bush:“Change is an energy policy that doesn’t rely on buddying up to the Saudi Royal family and then begging them for oil. An energy policy. Change is an energy policy that puts a price on pollution and makes the oil companies invest their record profits on clean, renewable sources energy that will create millions of new jobs and leave our children a saver planet.”
• For reasons that are unclear, MSNBC kept showing the one black face in the crowd, like there are a bunch of black folks in Iowa.
• Change is coming to America.

This was Obama’s best speech in a very long time.

Tags: Election 2008 by ecthompson
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Senator Hillary Clinton won Kentucky. The media cleverly picked up on her hint to the superdelegates that Senator Barack Obama can’t win the white vote.

So, I’m looking at this interactive graph that the NYT has on their web site. The graph is kind of cool but it gives you a ton of information that is mostly unusable. I’m not sure what I can do with the fact that Clay County, Ky has a median income of $19, 700 and a population of 7 percent college graduates. Oh, and Hillary Clinton won that county. Maybe, I was wrong. Maybe there is something that I can take out of this. There is a county in the U.S. where the median income is less than half the American median income. This is really poor (po’).

Tags: Economy, Election 2008 by ecthompson
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What terribly sad news. Senator Ted Kennedy has a brain tumor at 76 years of age. I’m sure that the doctors knew this hours after he arrived on Saturday. Kennedy underwent a brain biopsy, which was probably performed on Sunday. There really aren’t any good brain tumors in terms of long term survival. Malignant Gliomas are bad.

Official Hospital statement:

Statement from Dr. Lee Schwamm, Vice Chairman, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Larry Ronan, Primary Care Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital:

“Over the course of the last several days, we’ve done a series of tests on Senator Kennedy to determine the cause of his seizure. He has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital. Some of the tests we had performed were inconclusive, particularly in light of the fact that the Senator had severe narrowing of the left carotid artery and underwent surgery just 6 months ago. However, preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe. The usual course of treatment includes combinations of various forms of radiation and chemotherapy. Decisions regarding the best course of treatment for Senator Kennedy will be determined after further testing and analysis. Senator Kennedy will remain at Massachusetts General Hospital for the next couple of days according to routine protocol. He remains in good spirits and full of energy.”

Tags: Domestic Issues, Senate by ecthompson
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We all know about the ordeal that Bob Woodruff went through. Well, Kimberly Dozier, a CBS reporter, suffered a similar attack while covering the latest Iraq. After more than 20 surgeries, it looks like she survive the ordeal.

It is so sad. If Donald Rumsfeld didn’t think that he was smarter than everyone else, we could have sent 300 to 400 thousand troops and this ugly war would have been over years ago.

Tags: Iraq by ecthompson
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I think that it is very hard sometimes trying to figure out who the worst person in the world could be. Today we have three excellent candidates: William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North.

• William Kristol had another major factual error in his column.
• Rush Limbaugh read an essay then went on at length about “errors” in the essay. The essay was written by a 10th grader in 1996.
• Oliver North was on Fox “News” and had the nerve to talk about Bush’s (McCain’s) appeasement statements. This is the same Oliver North who was part of the Iran-Contra (weapons for hostages) scandal. You know, he had the nerve to say that Bush was right!

Tags: Countdown, Party Politics by ecthompson
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