Focus on Politics

Michelle Malkin covers Obama’s response to Wright’s latest speech in quite a bit of detail.

CNN reports

(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama said he is “outraged” by comments his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made Monday at the National Press Club and is “saddened by the spectacle.”

Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday denounced comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“I have been a member of Trinity Church since 1992. I have known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years,” he said at a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “The person I saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago.”

Obama said he is outraged by Wright’s remarks that seemed to suggest the U.S. government might be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community and his equation of some American wartime efforts with terrorism.

“What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing,” Obama said, adding that Wright had shown “little regard for me” and seemed more concerned with “taking center stage.”

Obama said Wright’s comments were not only “divisive and destructive,” but they “end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate.”

If Obama had taken a stronger stance against Wright the first time he probably wouldn’t be in this position now.

CNN Reports

(CNN)— Former president Bill Clinton criticized the Bush administration’s stimulus checks Monday saying they will only help the economy if everyone spends them and no one saves them.

“You know what you are supposed to do with these stimulus checks, is stimulate,” Bill Clinton told a group of his wife’s supporters while campaigning Indiana. “Go out and blow it. Don’t you dare pay down your credit card or save it,” he quipped.

Let’s imagine I have $600 in credit card debt. At an 18% interest rate and paying the minimum of $15 every month it would take me about 9 years to pay off and cost over $500 in interest.

If I were to take my $600 stimulus check and pay off that card I would free up $15 a month which I could then spend any way I like. In less than 4 years I would have put that $600 into the economy and saved myself $500 in interest which could also be put into the economy.

You then have to consider the credit card company. They just got $600 from you. Now they can loan that $600 to someone else who will put it into the economy directly or indirectly.

Paying off debt frees up capital when can then be put into the economy by way of buying new shiney trinkets.

If you put it in the bank, the bank invests that money into the economy and pays you a return of some sort unless you don’t bother to put it into a good bank like ING Direct. ING Direct pays over 3% interest on savings with no minimums and no fees.

So in the end it doesn’t matter what you do with the money. It will end up back into the economy.

Well, unless you stuff it in your mattress.

A parody based on

Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again”

Fox News reports

“I believe that Senator Obama does not share those views. But Senator Obama himself says it’s a legitimate political issue so I would imagine that many other people would share that view and it will be in the arena,” McCain said during a Miami-area media availability, alluding to comments Obama made during his Fox News Sunday interview today. The Illinois Democrat told FNS that “the fact that he is my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue.”

McCain is trying to run a clean fight. He gets flak from the right for it but I think in the end it will help him. There is enough coming out of Obama’s mouth (and his wife’s) that what comes out of Wright’s mouth should be a separate issue.

He still doesn’t want the ad to run but isn’t going to get in the middle of it. McCain would rather focus on the things that will win over independents and Democrats. Sadly, they don’t care about Wright. That is not an issue for many of them. They’ve already made their excuses and think Obama is still fantastic. If the right wants to independently go after Obama on things only they care about then that’s their business.

The way I see it is that the Wright issue go so much air time that I don’t think there’s a particularly compelling reason to pay for air time to show a small fraction of the story. If the hours of detailed debate didn’t sway you, a 30 second ad isn’t going to do it.

The Wright controversy needs to play out separate of this race and be dealt with outside of politics. Society needs to get to the bottom of it. Not political candidates.

The Democrats have 4047 delegates up for grabs. 793 of those are “super” delegates which can vote however they want. So 19.6% of the votes for the nominee are decided by 793 people. The rest of the delegates are split based on the popular vote. The result is that the popular vote must split 60-40 to decide the nominee. Otherwise 793 have the ability to go against the popular vote and decide.

Of course the Democrats are whining about this. Hillary at first said the people will decide. Now she’s saying they are a part of the process. And she’s right. If 60% of the people had picked her or Obama then it would be over. The people would have decided. But since they couldn’t agree, they are now part of a process. A process that their own party decided on long before Hillary and Obama were running.

If the democrats didn’t like the fact that 793 people could decide a nomination then they should have just gone with the popular vote. They’re the ones in 2000 that whined about the electoral system when Bush lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. And yet they have a system for picking the nominee that results in the exact same possible situation.

If they hate the fact that the few can decide the nominee then they should have gone with a mob rule, popular vote only system.

The fact is that those in power like to have more power than other people. A lot more.

Number of voters 221,285,099
Percentage of democrats 41.1
number of democrats 92,181,175
number that are not supers: 92,180,382
number that are: 793
equivelent: 18,067,354
one super = 22,783 democrats

One super delegate represents about 23 thousand votes.

If democrats don’t like it then they need to stop supporting it.

Maybe it’s some vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

The News Dispatch reports:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

“This is just a great opportunity for me to witness,” he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

Obama can associate with racist, hate filled ministers and admitted domestic terrorists. But you, a Republican cannot be seen with hate filled racists or you will lose your job. As it should be.

The Huffington Post Reports

Chris Matthew started off the Pennsylvania primary coverage with a bang tonight. Shortly after 6, seated by co-anchor Keith Olbermann, Matthews called the primary, and thus his coverage tonight, basically moot. “This contest is essentially over,” he proclaims to Keith. “Barack Obama is going to win the most elected delegates.”

He went on to say of the media, “Trying to keep this game going, we’ve created the delusion that somehow this race is still open.”

Using the numbers in Wikipedia for the delegates, if the Democrats had a winner take all system (as the General election will be in November) then Hillary would be up 1474 to Obama’s 1252. That’s considering Texas as two seperate races. One for the primaries and one for the caucus.

If we join them together and assume that Obama won the popular vote then Obama is ahead 1348 to Hillary’s 1378.

If we join them together and assume that Hillary won the popular vote then Hillary is ahead 1541 to Obama’s 1185.

Because the method of choosing a nominee for the Democrats doesn’t match the method for choosing the actual President, there’s a good chance Democrats could nominate the wrong person.

Barack is getting by because of caucuses and losing by a small enough margin in the big states. Those crutches won’t be available in November.

This is the ad about Obama that McCain wants pulled.

Apparently McCain feels that issues rather than associations should be debated.

Which is fine actually. McCain needs to debate Obama to get to the bottom of what Obama believes. We can assume what Obama believes based on his associations. But Americans will swayed more by what they know.

CNN Reports

African-American voters in Pennsylvania supported Obama by a substantial margin. According to exit polls, 92 percent cast their vote for the Illinois senator, compared to 8 percent for Clinton.

Obama has gotten no less than 68% of the black vote in any state where polls were taken.

People like to claim that racism isn’t playing a role because not just blacks vote for Obama. And they’re right, for most people it’s not an issue of race. But for blacks, it is quite apparent that they’re voting for Obama because he’s black.

Clinton is not winning the white vote. The only vote she is winning by a reasonable margin is the women’s vote. It’s not unreasable for 60% of people to vote for you. Even 70% might just mean you’re really popular. But when just one race of people is giving you that much support and more there’s an obvious problem.

Clinton got 70% of the white vote in one state. Obama has gotten 70%+ in every state except two where he got only 68%.

I’m keeping an up to date chart with exit poll numbers from CNN highlighting various oddities.

Obama is whining because Osama Bin Laden shows up in the ad. He wants to pretend that Hillary is playing on our fears. These are not fears she is pointing out. These are the realities.

We want a president who can deal with these problems.

Obama would rather stuff his face with waffles than deal with a simple question about Hamas.

It’s ads like these that highlight how pathetic Obama is. What’s Obama going to do about Osama? Waffles. What’s Obama going to do about gas prices? Waffles. What’s Obama going to do about foreclosures? Waffles.

I hope he gets stomped on today. I don’t want to have to worry about that fool getting elected in November. If Hillary and McCain are the nominees then I wouldn’t vote for Hillary but I wouldn’t be horribly upset if she won either.

It’s 3 A.M., the phone the ringing, where is Obama? Waffles.