sort of cross posting from the GOS ..

Barack’s statement today about the anger of the people who are not even in his base of support, and more importantly his response to the fawning McCain and Clinton campaigns as they spun to the PA electorate convinced me.

Obama’s ready to stand and fight for what he believes in.

I might not always agree with exactly what it is, that which Barack Obama believes in, but I am sick to death of leaders who will not stand up for what they believe, especially Democrats. What I saw today shows me without a doubt this man has the self determination and pride to stand for what he thinks is right.

I’ve seen enough of the guy to realize he does offer a set of viewpoints that are closer to mine than John McCain’s, easily and he has eclipsed Hillary Clinton because he has cut through the BS, and has let truth speak.

I may not always agree with his viewpoints, it would be too much to ask. But as time has progressed, I have seen the candidate take on challenges and do so directly, and honestly. That’s a mark of a leader, a person who can be trusted to stay true to himself. There’s some sort of personal integrity aspect to Barack Obama I am beginning to like, more and more.

As I told our fellow rabble rousers over in Orangeville, that doesn’t mean I’m hopping on the Bash Hillary and Bill bus.  

cross post from the GOS

Just got done listening Rachel Maddow [humorously] tear into John McCain for his apparent inability to distinguish between Shiite and Sunni, Baathists, criminal gangs and the ever nebulous ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’. McCain’s continued need to ensure Iranians are somehow implicated in every action – even if it’s Baathists or common criminals committing them is yet another part of the narrative, echoed by Petraeus and Crocker today in Senate testimony.

Even with public prompting from Lieberman aside, these ‘errors’ being made by McCain are being buried by the traditional media in the US at every turn. The links to show ‘Iranian influence’ are tenuous at best, but yet continue to be offered for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq.

McCain [and the Bush administration] need the traditional media to keep burying these supposed “gaffes”. I say supposed, because I think McCain and these administration shills are doing these ridiculous conflations quite on purpose.

Top officials target media shield act

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.

The Free Flow of Information Act proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, could harm national security and would encourage more leaks of classified information, the four officials wrote in letters to senators made public Thursday.

The legislation gives an overly broad definition of journalists that “can include those linked to terrorists and criminals,” wrote Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

“All individuals and entities who ‘gather’ or ‘publish’ information about ‘matters of public interest’ but who are not technically designated terrorist organizations, foreign powers or agents of a foreign power will be entitled to the bill’s protections,” Mukasey and McConnell stated.

Journalists, press freedom. How quaint. What an old fashioned idea.  

Gore expects the situation to “resolve itself” by the time the convention comes around.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2…

MURFREESBORO – Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will “resolve itself” before the party’s convention in late August.

Gore told The Associated Press that he sees no urgency in endorsing a presidential candidate.

“What have we got, five months left?” he said in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

When pressed that several prominent Democrats, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, have expressed hope for an earlier decision on the nomination, Gore said: “I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Sort of disappointed to see Howard Dean doing something a little different ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…

“If we have an ugly, divided convention, we will lose. John McCain is not a strong candidate for president. The only way we lose is if we are divided.”

I think Gore’s got the right frame here, the correct vision to adopt. Dean should be backing away from even giving the appearance that Democrats will be anything but united, come August.  

This new ad by McCain seems to imply that the other candidates are not American, somehow.

The voice-over is very dark, insistent and nearly foreboding in tone.

A quick dive into it, the implied contrasts here give a clue to the tone of this campaign.

“That she [America] is worth protecting, it’s people, honorable”

The implied smears against Barack Obama are loaded up, and ready to go. If we think we’ve seen nasty so far, just wait “my friends”. We’ll be swimming in innuendo up to our eyeballs.

But it’s that tone, the announcer’s voice that drives home the implications that ‘there’s something not right with the other candidates’.

The announcer in this ad, Powers Boothe played Jim Jones in the story about Guyana, in the made for TeeVee movie in 1980.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00…

Yes, there are degrees of separation here, but somehow it seems fitting in a way this guy who made his mark in Hollywood portraying an insane cult leader who led over 900 people to kill themselves should be doing voice overs for McCain.

One other thing about the announcer; he seems to think that getting an Emmy is more important than honoring a SAG union strike line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S…

Fascinating, what’s behind the scenes at these ads at times, ain’t it?  

(Much like a traveler to a new city, I’m scoping out new places)

The future, and where humankind will be in that future at some indeterminate point is constantly in my mind. This subject fascinates me to no end.

We have ‘mastered’ some aspects of our limited existence, mapping our genome for example, but yet we as a species cannot come to grips with 10,000 years of savagery on our hands. The technologies that offer us such great hope in understanding the nature of our world provide us with a pathway directly to ours and other species on the planet doom.

There’s little attempt to try to come to grips with how this technology is used, ethically and morally in the blogosphere. How nations, politics, capitalism and corporatism play together with technology sets our path to the future as a species, more than anything else.

So I start with questions about our place, human individuals in a society that uses technology, just as I am doing right now, typing this out.

What are the powers of one individual, in a technological society such as ours?

What can one voice, one individual do to effect change, that might offer a brighter future for all of humanity?

It’s certain that one individual can cause damage, be it political, social, or even to truth and reality itself. What I believe real sustainable change is for the most part, it must come from is cooperative actions on the parts of masses of people. I’m curious to hear what your opinions are about how this can come about.

I’m trying to reassess what role I have to play in all of this, and I appreciate the opportunity to express myself here.