Jack & Jill Politics

Laura Ingrahm adopted a Guatemalan child.


While I'm all for adoption...um...cultural sensitivity training anyone?

James Pethokoukis -- who actually coined the "Dude, where's my recession?" line -- observes:


What do you call a recession where the economy keeps going up and up, even if a bit sluggishly? Well, my friends, you call that an expansion. And that is what we seem to have right now, despite all the economic doomsaying about a recession or even a Great Depression 2.0. Today, the Commerce Department revised its first-quarter estimate of gross domestic product upward to 0.9 percent from 0.6 percent. That follows 0.6 percent GDP growth in the final quarter of 2007. The revision also makes it more likely that the second quarter will be positive, maybe 1.5 percent, maybe even higher.



Now I went back and checked the numbers for the past 50 years and didn't find a single case of a recession—as calculated by the National Bureau of Economic Research—that started with or contained two straight quarters of positive GDP growth, much less three quarters.



It may not be the best economy in living memory, but it's not all that bad, either.

truthseeker,


it was the wrong time for Father Mike to say this...should have said it earlier..Obama is done with Clinton...he needs to come up with something to say against McCain.

Am I the only one in the country who doesn't give a rat's ass about McClellan's book?


Is he really telling us anything we didn't already know?

Father Michael Pfleger


http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Mocking_Hillary_at_Trinity.html

Lets count the votes.
Delegates: Pledged Super Total Needed

Obama 1,660.5 320.5 1,981 44



Clinton 1,499.5 280.5 1,780 245



Remaining 86 195 281

(2,025 delegates needed for victory)









Counting all the votes, Obama still leads

by kos

Thu May 29, 2008 at 09:12:14 AM PDT

Since the Clinton campaign wants to count unsanctioned contests and include their votes into the popular vote tally ("I've gotten the most votes ever!"), here are a couple more unsanctioned contests that could be thrown into the tally:



Nebraska: Obama +2,663

Washington: Obama +36,015

Idaho: Obama +7,869







Those are all from non-binding primaries conducted in those caucus states. Combined, they'd add 46,547 votes for Obama if we were stupid enough to think that votes that don't matter actually count.



But that's not all the votes that were cast for either Obama or Clinton this year. There's the Texas caucuses, which aren't counted in any popular vote tallies. But since every vote matters to Clinton, and she's claiming that she's gotten more votes cast for her than any other Democrat in a primary, then of course we have to be intellectually consistent and, well, count every vote.



There are no official tallies of caucus turnout, but estimates range from 900,000 to 1.2 million. Let's be nice and go with the lower estimate, 900K. Obama won the caucuses 56-44. That 12-point spread is another 120,000 108,000-vote gain for Obama.



That means that tallying EVERY single contest this cycle, even the ones that didn't count (since that's the Clinton standard), gives Obama an extra 154,547 votes.



Now let's look at the popular vote tally if Michigan, Florida, and the caucus states are counted (and remember, this is with Obama getting zero votes in Michigan): Clinton has a 54,432-vote advantage.



Now let's roll in the vote totals from every other contest that didn't matter, and we now have a 100,115-vote Obama advantage.



So while Clinton may claim she's gotten more votes than Obama this year, fact is, that's not true under any scenario unless you start excluding elections.



This post is absurd, of course -- there's no reason to count the votes of non-binding contests that had no bearing on the delegate selection process, and it's sketchy at best to double count Texas voters participating in their two binding contests. Still, this post is the logical extension of the Clinton argument.



If you're going to count every vote cast this primary cycle, even those of contests that didn't count, then you count every single vote cast, including those of every contest that didn't count.

Venessa,


I really miss Gordon Parks.



Thanks for the photo

This isn't political or even current, but I would love to share this old photograph with all of you. :)


Also, d, I expect Obama will be received well by the military in Iraq. Look at this video from Charlie Rose, where a reporter talks about Obama's support and two parents of soldiers talk about the admiration and respect for him in the military.



Obama has had the second-highest total funds donated by service-members (after Ron Paul), and I think he commands a lot of respect.

Not sure if you all saw this but talkingpointsmemo is hiring.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/197366.php



TPM Media is announcing a job opening for a news editor working in our New York City office. The news editor has primary responsibility for running and updating the news section on the front page of Talking Points Memo (TPM), working closely with the site's managing editor. Key responsibilities include staying on top of breaking news, finding current news items, working with our reporters to find which TPM stories to feature, writing headlines and story descriptions, as well as selecting news photos and video to complement our front page news coverage. Applicants must be inveterate news and politics junkies and be able to work in a fast paced news environment every day. Their job is to make sure our front page is always on top of everything and putting everything in front of our readers' eyes from a witty, TPM perspective.



If you're interested please send a resume, two clips and a letter describing your interest and qualifications for the job to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject line "TPM News Editor Job".



This is a full-time, entry-level position, with health care. Salary is negotiable.

S,
Check this out:



Bush running for third term?

RALPH PETERS: "To date, not one 'mainstream media' journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we 'bring the troops home now.' There's plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well."

Hmm, my comment seems to have gotten lost in cyberland.


Congrats to JJP on its listing on The Field's blog roll!

I updated the Wiki last night. We're up to 50 incidents.


If you believe I forgot any, please drop them in here.



ClintonAttacksObamaWiki Incident Page

Hmmmm...




Liberal media bias is alive and well, and both Hillary and Obama benefit from it accordng to a new study by Pew Research.

_______________________________________





And the man portrayed by the left as evil incarnate, Rupert Murdoch, is saying Barack Obama will win by a landslide in November.

Foreclosure Nation: Squatters or Pioneers?
News: Take Back the Land installs homeless families in foreclosed Miami-Dade County properties. Here's what the neighbors think.



By Tristram Korten



May/June 2008 Issue

Mamyrah Prosper steps gingerly over ankle-high grass strewn with plastic bags and empty soda bottles in the yard of a vacant redbrick house in Miami's Liberty City. She peers through a gap in a boarded-up window. "It looks in good shape," she says. "I mean, the walls aren't falling down. This is definitely one of our stronger options."



Prosper means that if the place checks out, she and her colleagues from Take Back the Land, a local group that advocates for affordable housing, will break in, change the locks, paint and clean, innovate a way to connect water and electricity, and then move a homeless family into the house. The criminal laws they'll violate in the process range from trespassing to breaking and entering (even burglary, if the police get ambitious), which requires the organization to keep a pro bono lawyer on standby.



"We call it 'liberating the housing,'" says Take Back the Land's cofounder Max Rameau, a compact Haitian American who's earned a reputation in Miami for creative activism. In 2006, Take Back received widespread attention when it took over a vacant city lot and erected a shantytown for the homeless that thrived for six months—that is, until a resident's candle burned down the encampment. Rameau's latest, and even more legally dubious, campaign targets homes shuttered by foreclosure.



In Greater Miami, there's no shortage of those. Last year, Miami-Dade County recorded 26,391 foreclosures, a nearly threefold increase from 2006, and the pace has only quickened since then. Meanwhile, public housing is in crisis; at least four people are in line for each of the 10,000 available units, and the local housing agency—spectacularly corrupt, even by Miami standards—was taken over by the federal government last year.



Communities nationwide have seen a deluge of properties left vacant by foreclosures, but housing advocates say they've yet to witness anything like Rameau's coordinated squatting campaign. "That's the first I've heard of that kind of direct action," says Linda Couch, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Low Income Housing Coalition. "It's incredibly frustrating for housing advocates knowing that there are so many vacant houses amid so many people on the brink of homelessness."



Rameau says Take Back's campaign has two objectives: "One is to actually house people. The other is to bring attention to the contradictions in housing policy. The problem is that doing one precludes the other." Drawing too much attention to Take Back's efforts, he explains, would also get the attention of law enforcement. So Rameau's organization has placed only two homeless families in foreclosed homes since the campaign began in October; the first was Cassandra and Jason, a couple in their late 20s, and their two small children. They'd been living in a van before Rameau moved them into a one-story stucco home in Liberty City. When I visited them in February, Cassandra, who works as a street vendor selling jewelry and incense, ushered me into the living room, furnished with two chairs, a moving trunk, and a small television. Bedsheets covered the windows, and the walls had just been painted saffron.



As far as the neighbors are concerned, the current tenants—squatters though they are—are a vast improvement over the crack den the vacant house had become. One neighbor even loaned the family electricity via an extension cord until a mysterious man sympathetic to Take Back's cause turned on power at the house. "I didn't ask any questions," Cassandra says. The new living situation, temporary as it might be, affords her and Jason the time to save up to rent a new apartment, she said. "This just takes the stress off."



According to the Miami-Dade County Housing Agency, squatters, if discovered, will be promptly removed from the premises and potentially prosecuted. So far, though, Take Back's foreclosure-squatting pioneers have avoided detection. Despite the dicey legality, Rameau says there are 14 families like Cassandra's on his waiting list. "We counsel them that they could be arrested if caught," he says. "But things are so desperate, they are willing to risk it."

So did 76 other senators.


Including 27 democrats-Edwards, Kerry, and Reid being among them.

"She Voted for The War."


Repeat, Rinse and Spit...

a subtle elegance...


A Subtle Elegance... by James Fallows, The Atlantic

fyi CNN, MSNBC & Cspan are covering the meeting on Saturday re the Rules Committee

Here's a link to a really interesting and informative video about the shared history between blacks and latinos.


http://alisavaldesrodriguez.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-obama-endorsement.html



It's done by writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, who is pro-Obama and trying to make sure that people don't buy the media's hype that latinos won't vote for a black man.

Read this article on CNN this morning - written by an interracial couple on why Americans can't "get over" race...


They don't seem to offer any answers though - more context. Which is useful, I suppose.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/29/cohens.race.politics/index.html

True Colors


If that doesn't work, the link is

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/true_colors.html

d,


Your link is not working.

craig,


There is no way that he will be able to delay a trip to Iraq before the election.



He should go.



One of the main reasons why I do not support Obama is because of his stand on Iraq.



If he were able to acknowledge that we are succeeding and that victory is possible, as show a willingness to adjust his poston, it would make me much more comfortable with an Obama presidency. After all, Bush was roundly and rightly criticized for his stubborness in resistng a new strategy.

Here's a collection of Obama T-Shirts - A new shirt added everyday!

From the troops themselves:


True Colors

In another cave to the right wing bloggers and Rush Limbaugh who have been pounding him, Obama is trying to nuance his way out of his former statements on meeting unilaterally with American enemies.


So egregious is his backpedaling, even the New York Times is willing to point it out:



This week, Mr. Obama said that he was still considering meeting with Iranian leaders, though he would not necessarily guarantee a direct meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.



“There is no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he is actually in power,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”



But, let's go back to his original statement before he decided to cave to Rush and the bloggers:



The caveats belie the simple answer Mr. Obama gave during a debate last summer, when the issue was first raised in a major public forum. Without hesitation or qualification, Mr. Obama said he would hold direct talks with America’s enemies, drawing strong and immediate criticism from his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.



“Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” asked Stephen Sixta, a video producer who submitted the question for the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate.



"Mr. Obama, the first candidate to respond, answered, “I would.”



Several aides immediately thought it was a mistake and sought to dial back his answer. But on a conference call the morning after the debate, Mr. Obama told his advisers that he had meant what he said and thought the answer crystallized how he differed from his rivals."



Obama only means what he says until he doesn't.



And if he'll cave like that to the right, how fast will he cave to China and Iran?

leneypoo,


Success in Iraq can and has been for some time now, defined as the US troops providing the security necessary to allow the Iraqi government to achieve political reconciliation between all factions and create a stable government while training Iraqi troops to take the lead in operations against outside terrorist groups and insurgent miltias.



Victory is the establishment of a free, self-governing, stable, functioning Iraq that can defend itself.

Barack isn't yielding to GOP pressure to go to Iraq. But you can spin it that way if it makes you feel good.


If I were him, though, I wouldn't go into a war zone till after he's elected in November.

Leney,
The success in Iraq is evidenced by Iraqis beginning to take charge of their own security and political future. Have we won yet? No....but we're getting there.



It will be interesting to see how Obama is received by the military in Iraq.

BTW what's the definition of success in Iraq right now? It keeps changing. If they don't want to leave as "losers" (too late imo) then they need to come up with that definition and leave.

It's not caving in at alll.


Obama has planning a world tour for a couple of months now. IIRC, they were planning to do it right after the Texas/Ohio primaries...expecting a win in Texas (and sen. Clinton dropping out).



I guess now that they expect Hillary to get out soon, the plans are back again.

anon,


It is the right thing to do.



He will have to face the facts, proof that the surge is succeeding, that we are winning. I prefer this happen sooner than later.



What will happen to his position, his promise, to immediately withdraw from Iraq?



What will happen to his anti-war base, should he acknowledge progress?



What will happen to independent swing voters who want to leave Iraq, but not in defeat, should he try to downplay the success of our

military?

That was fast.


Obama is now considerng a trip to Iraq.



He’s doing the right thing, but I am sincerely surprised that he’d bow to this sort of pressure so quickly.



His flag-pin stance is stupid but there’s a certain ballsiness to it if he’s willing to stick with it and absorb the political consequences because he believes in it. Which … he isn’t.



Same here with him backing down after initially objecting to an Iraq trip, same with his ballyhooed speech on race, which he had to do to save candidacy.



It’s the Clintons whose every move is supposed to be calculated for political effect; but it looks like Obama can beat them at that game, too.

Thanks for posting this. 75,000 strong, Wow!