Jack & Jill Politics

Barack Obama is master of the new Facebook politics

Obama’s Emotional Tribute to Teddy – In Front of 25,000

Petition: Sack Liz Trotta at Fox
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/fox-news-has-to-sack-liz-trotta

please tell me you are going to cover this
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/fox-pundit-wishes-for-oba_b_103500.html#postComment

I have been thinking about the American Warrior Caste for a long time, now. The Warrior Caste is made up of families that serve in the military for generations.

Recently, there seem to be widening divisions between civilians and the military. Those who continue to serve have less in common with those who don’t, and this gap widens with every generation.

Me? My family had been in either the Navy or Marines since the Revolutionary War. I never had any pressure at all to join. In fact, my mother was vehemently against military service. But still, I went. The gap is widening between my mother’s generation and mine.

So why did I serve? Why does a family continually have children that decide to serve in the military?

I think we can definitely dismiss the case for riches and wealth. Some liberals would like to believe that we were “Born to Kill” (think Full Metal Jacket). That’s not it either. And while I definitely took advantage of the college benefits, that’s not the motivation.

Almost all of us military folks bleed red, white and blue. We tear up when the Star Spangled Banner is played because we imagine Francis Scott Key captured and desparate, hoping to see his beloved flag flying. We tell people at the ball park to take their hats off during the national anthem.

We defend our country no matter who is in the White House. We suffer when the leadership is poor and we thrive when the leader ship is good.

But how does a family serve for generations?

The reason is that there is a feeling of obligation for the benefit of living in a country built on ideas. That we understand that freedom is not for free. That somebody has to defend it. And we are actually willing to do it.

Some of us may feel morally superior because of it. However, I feel that my service connects me to my country, my ancestors, and my heroes and that it gives me a better understanding of the price of liberty. There IS an underlying obligation on us, but it’s not to our families or country, but to ourselves to see if living the life defending freedom is worth it. I tell you it is.

One last thing. Those of us in the Warrior Caste feel more akin to those with the same connections. You can see this for yourself when two of us, who’ve never met before, are instantly brothers or sisters after two minutes of conversation (or blogging). It’s not understood. It’s not implied. It is felt…it is felt down in the deepest reaches of your gut, your soul.

The Warrior Caste serves for generations because it has deep faith. Faith that your leaders won’t send you to the far corners of the earth to do wrong. Faith that your fellow citizens will care for your well-being, keeping you equipped and fed. Faith that our Founding Fathers were right in that fighting for freedom is worth dying for. Faith in your fellow soldiers.

We hope to live up to the expectations of our parents and ancestors and, most of all, of you.

Just a little note to Jack & Jill Politics to thank you for everything that you do. You are dedicated to sharing truth to us all, which is greatly needed. Keep Going Strong !!!

p.s. We read you everyday.

Greg Jones
http://www.Blacks4Barack.org

Hillary Clinton Leaves Behind Unpaid Bills
May 24, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign has moved on from Indiana, leaving behind $55,000 in unpaid bills for campaign events at Indiana University.

The debts are for appearances made by Clinton, former President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, during March and April leading up to Indiana’s May 6 primary.

Barack Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, has already paid the $108,142 it owed IU for two Assembly Hall events — a rally featuring the Illinois senator and an Obama-sponsored concert by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds.

The university charged the campaigns for sound equipment, security and other needs for their events, but school officials knew there was a risk that the bills would not be paid, IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.

“We are very happy that we were able to have both Democratic candidates here,” MacIntyre said. “We feel it was a great thing for the students, and we don’t have any regrets. We’d like to get paid, and certainly we believe that ultimately, we will be paid.”

The Clinton campaign has received two invoices from IU for the events and expected to pay both during the next few weeks, spokesman Isaac Baker said yesterday.

“We try to pay our invoices as they come in within about a month,” Baker said. “We very much appreciate the university’s hospitality and being willing to host us.”

In spending reports filed this week, Clinton listed $19.5 million in debts, including $10 million she has lent her campaign.

Clinton and Obama both spent millions of dollars on television commercials, campaign offices and events around Indiana for more than a month before the primary, which Clinton won.

The Clinton campaign report listed several smaller debts around the state through the end of April, including about $900 to Kim Brand’s company for setting up the computers at Clinton’s state headquarters in downtown Indianapolis.

Brand said he was paid after making repeated telephone calls to the campaign.

“We didn’t want to let it get too far out because then memories fade, relationships lapse,” he said.

MacIntyre said he was not sure what IU would do to pursue the Clinton debt if the campaign did not pay it.

“She owes $20 million. I suspect we’re probably not going to get paid in a timely manner,” he said. “But what a great opportunity for students. They had … a chance to be up close and personal with both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton.”

Source: AP

This is from http://www.againsthillary.com

rikyrah, that ” Obama does it…with Integrity” link is great!

One particular thing got me thinking:

Obama’s attacks on Clinton have not been any the less effective for their soft edges. From January on, he has used her attacks to argue that her immersion in Rovian politics — her willingness, as he’s said at his sharpest, to “say anything to get elected” and “calculate and poll-test” positions — has distorted her judgment and limited her power to reform the political process, as he has pledged to do. In a sense, that’s a character attack, as Geoff Garin charged in an April 25 op-ed. But it’s one that resonates, as Hillary has demonstrated these limitations over and over. Obama has simply added accents to the self-portrait she’s drawn.

I agree and I feel like maybe there should be different or additional categories beyond “character attack” versus “policy difference attack” (or whatever the best ways is to describe those existing categories).

I see a huge difference, for example, between Clinton calling Senator Obama elitist and out of touch, and Senator Obama making the argument described in the quote above. The diference goes back to integrity for me, a particular kind of integrity: speaking with action and using words descriptively.

The contrast to this integrity is leading with words and relying on rhetoric to try to create and control perception.

Ms. Hillary persistently tries to create reality through rhetoric. We have seen many many examples of this practice during this campaign.

In this one relatively small example mentioned in that article, she jumped on one statement of Senator Obama and proceeded to employ overblown rhetoric about his “bitter” statement (calling him elitist and out of touch). She did not base her statements on actual real visible patterns of action/behavior from Senator Obama. She took words and built a little “rhetoric castle” in the sky, balancing on one statement — not a very firm foundation.

In contrast, Senator Obama’s argument quoted above is actually a description based on an actual visible pattern of Ms. Hillary’s persistent actions and behaviors. These actions and behaviors he is describing are visible and available for the scrutiny of anyone who wants to assess what Senator Obama is saying for whether or not it is true. This is a grounded, strong foundation and is in keeping with how Senator Obama does things overall in my observations.

I have seen on several occasions that Senator Obama encourages people to look to his actions, his visible life, read his books , gather real information on who he is and where he’s coming from. What I take from this is that he is grounded enough in what he is saying and doing to encourage other people to do our own assessment of what he’s about and what he does.

In contrast, Ms. Hillary has been increasingly furiously engaged in trying to interpret herself and everyone/everything else — to tell people what to think and how to think about it, to call on people to trust her vision of reality, to not rely on anything else, and certainly not to develop and exercise our own abilities to figure out what is going on based on our own experiences and observations.

Ironically, she has attacked his campaign for being built on words, when in fact that’s not really the situation at all if you look at what actually goes on.

Anyway — I have been watching these dynamics very closely throughout the campaign because this kind of thing is exactly at the center of how I assess what is going on and where my loyalties are.

This analysis is closely related to what I am thinking right now about this, though I very strongly suspect that Senator Obama would not be in favor of the analysis in this excerpt or the whole book):

Hypocrisy as a Way of Life

Anon 07:09, why don’t you post to Dailykos and Democratic Underground? I think I read somewhere where people were talking about meeting up in D.C. the 31st.

Take heart folks. . .

This brotha is ONLY 49 delegates away from securing the nomination.

Here’s the big question:

Does the Party MOVE THE GOALINE on Saturday by re-instating any or all of the FL and MI delegates????

I’ll probably be really pissed over the weekend if they change that 2026 number.

But take heart once again, because it seems as though the super delegates will flood towards Obama on June 4 to END this process. At least that’s what President Jimmy Carter says.

All other reports I’ve seen say that Hillary is getting nowhere with the super delegates.

So let’s hope for all of this to END on June 4. . . .

That’s ONLY 9 days away!

B-Serious, I am celebrating along with you. Only 9 more days and hopefully we will be able to move on to a new phase and the national cmpaign, which is in 180 something days, I think. When you put it like that, it seems really close. Sen. Graham of FL was just now on CNN, and said he would like to see all the delegates of FL seated. The way he would like them to be allocated is kinda hard to figure out, but he said 50/50, and that it should reflect the voting patterns of the country. I hope that means 50% for kkklinton & 50% for Obama. He asid the FL is a victim because the republicans selected their voting day which went against the rules of the DNC. My question is, why is this just now being handled? If the date was determined last year, why wasn’t the problem handled last year?

One thing white Americans prefer not to remember on this memory-day is the whiteness of the bomb.

The Triple Nickles

(Yes, that is the way they spell it…) First and only Black paratrooper unit. 555th Parachute Infantry.

They are lesser known than the Buffalo Soldiers or the Tuskegee Airmen. But they were some bad brothers!

555th Parachute Infantry – The Triple Nickles

P.S. Someone please help the brothas out with their website.

Why is it so big on the screen?