Today the House Democrats tried to open up 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve which presently holds 700 million barrels.  The 70 million barrels would only account for a 3 day supply for the citizens of the U.S., however in the past when the SPR had been tapped into it had relieved pressure at the pump in ‘91, ‘00, and ‘05. 

The measure received a majority vote, however the proposal required a 2/3s vote to pass.  The reasoning behind requiring a 2/3s vote as opposed to majority was so the Republicans could not add on an amendment allowing the off shore drilling proposition that’s been receiving so much coverage on the news lately.

As a result of not receiving the 2/3s vote, the House will now go on a 5 week vacation without having done anything to address our current oil crisis.  Of course, had the measure passed the White House (read: Bush) said it would’ve been vetoed anyway.

Thanks all, way to get shit done.

On Thursday the House shocked everyone- including itself, with it’s votes on a 3-part war funding bill.

The surprise action left antiwar activists on and off Capitol Hill exultant, Republicans gloating and Democratic leaders baffled. Recriminations from all sides quickly followed.

House leaders had broken the war funding bill into three separate measures. The first, to continue funding combat operations, needed Republican votes to pass over the objection of antiwar Democrats. The second would impose strict Iraq-related policy measures strongly opposed by President Bush, and the third would fund domestic priorities, including a new G.I. Bill and levees around New Orleans.

That legislative legerdemain became the plan’s undoing. Rather than go along, 131 House Republicans voted “present” on the war funding provision, saying they were incensed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and a few of her lieutenants had drafted the bill in secret, then expected them to play along.

Reps say their action is a boycott of shady Dem dealings, Dems say the Reps had a choice between funding the war, or not funding it, and they chose to wash their hands of it altogether.

(T)he impact is likely to be short-lived. The Senate will take up its version of the war funding bill next week; it is expected to restore the war funds and strip out the policy prescriptions most disagreeable to the White House. The White House reiterated its veto threat of the overall package yesterday morning, demanding a new version stripped of policy prescriptions and domestic spending, including the bill’s $52 billion expansion of veterans’ education benefits. The supplemental appropriations vote is the last major clash on Iraq policy between Congress and Bush.

Had it become law, the House bill would have brought the total cost of the war in Iraq to around $660 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, more expensive than any U.S. military effort except World War II.

As passed, the House bill would require troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days, with a goal of removing all combat forces by December 2009. The Iraqi government would have to match U.S. reconstruction funding dollar for dollar, and would be required to offer the U.S. military the same fuel subsidies it provides its own citizens.

Basically as it stands, rather than continue to flush money in a situation that taxes our country’s resources and money more than we can afford, this bill will improve scholastic options for troops who have served, begin bringing the troops home as well as giving them more time off inbetween deployments to recouperate, and make the Iraqi gov’t begin to pull it’s actual fair share of the load. Sounds pretty reasonable to me, but of course reasonable dealings have never been the current admin’s strong point, as evidenced by the fact that the White House has promised to veto this thing to death should it even reach their door.

And while the improvement of educational benefits to the troops sounds like something anyone, regardless of political affiliation could get behind- leave it to Prez hopeful John McCain to try to use it as a tool for keeping the troops in the military (which in turn makes it all the more difficult to use the benefits to get to college, because, you know- deployments tend to make it hard to get to get to class on time).

The measure has attracted broad bipartisan support, but it is opposed by Bush because of its cost, its tax increase and fears that its generosity could entice service members to leave the military rather than reenlist at the end of their tours. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, has put forward a less generous alternative that would save its richest benefits for service members doing multiple tours.

But McCain’s efforts have run into bipartisan opposition — from lawmakers, veterans organizations and educators. Former homeland security secretary Tom Ridge, a close McCain ally, came out for Webb’s measure yesterday.

“I have tremendous regard for Senator McCain, but I can’t figure out where he is right now,” said Dartmouth College President James Wright, a former Marine who helped negotiate the Webb-Warner language. “It seems to me our posture as a nation cannot be to say to servicemen and -women, ‘We do not value you unless you reenlist.’ That wasn’t the contract they signed.”

But no matter what happened in the House, expect the Senate to sink the whole thing and bring it right back to war spending where this gov’t seems to think it belongs.

Did it surprise anyone that Clinton took Pennsylvania? I’m willing to wager that the Obama camp wasn’t shocked she won the popular vote in that state either. The fact that the Obama camp hasn’t gotten it’s feathers ruffled by the defeat is what’s particularly bothersome.

Most of us knew Clinton would take Pennsylvania. Sometimes demographics don’t lie. She had a lock on the state’s voters long before the ballets were cast; older, white, and female. It was just a matter of determining the margin of victory.

What’s got me irked then?

Money.

Flush with cash, Obama reported spending $11.2 million on television in the state, more than any place else. That compared with $4.8 million for Clinton.

Wow. Obama sure spent a lot of cash on a state that was destined to sway towards Clinton. Not to mention, before the Penn. primary, it was statistically unlikely Clinton will win enough delegates to receive the Democratic nomination.

And from what I can determine, the vast amount of spending Obama put into this states primary could only mean one thing:

Obama has long since past the point of his race with Clinton as being just business. Now, it’s personal. It’s so personal that he’s willing to spend nearly 25% of his on hand cash on a state that was favoring Clinton from day one.

Now, who was saying something about Obama and Clinton becoming running mates? They better be put up in two White Houses then.

Plain and simple, Michael Moore is standing by Obama. On his website, he posted a letter explaining why:

I haven’t spoken publicly ’til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don’t give a rat’s ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there’s a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word “Democratic” next to the candidate’s name.

Seriously, I know so many people who don’t care if the name under the Big “D” is Dancer, Prancer, Clinton or Blitzen. It can be Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Barry Obama or the Dalai Lama.

Right, so in general, many of us are just looking for anyone but a Republican in office next year.

But why Obama, Mr. Moore?

…over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

So… Clinton’s pulling out some dirty cards that show her as the evil hag she is… and?

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

Moore is identifying the momentum that’s swelling around Obama… a momentum that’s unifying a country… not polarizing. Apparently, a vote4 for Obama is a vote for something larger than one person. Recognizing the unification surrounding Obama is the most important point of his letter and why we should care.

Take a peak at the complete letter here.

Well, you know… Personal for polite politics. Really, it could be much much worse. But this is what counts as personal attacks I suppose.

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took their hard-fought battle for the Democratic presidential nomination down to a deeply personal level in a nationally televised debate last night, questioning each other’s honesty, appeal to working-class voters, and electability in November.

Clinton, seeking momentum in the dwindling weeks of the primary campaign, accused Obama of associating with controversial figures, including his own former preacher. Though she called Obama a “good man” and said, after some prodding, that he could win the White House, Clinton said he would have many liabilities in the fall campaign.

“They’re going to be out there in full force,” Clinton said of the Republicans. “I’ve been in this arena for a long time. I have a lot of baggage and everybody has rummaged through it for years.”

Obama accused Clinton of running a negative campaign, pointing to her attacks last night as further evidence. Obama said Clinton herself could not pass the electability test she was imposing on him. “By Senator Clinton’s own vetting standards, I don’t think she would make it,” he said.

While Clinton criticized Obama for his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, a violent 1960s radical group, Obama noted that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had pardoned two members of the same group. With Clinton’s own political baggage, Obama said, “There is no doubt that the Republicans would attack either of us.”

The first 45 minutes of the nearly two-hour debate – broadcast by ABC from Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center – were devoted solely to politics and electability.

Of course, after such bitter fighting words *rolls eyes* the two both began to speak of the need for party unity. Whoo hoo.

After all this mindless squabble, the two finally opened up to debate about… *gasp* …issues!

In the second half of the debate, the two candidates delved into foreign and domestic policy, again airing their differences over whether to meet unconditionally with leaders of rogue countries – he would, she wouldn’t – and on their plans to shore up Social Security. Obama has said he would consider raising the cap on income that is taxed for Social Security, while Clinton has refused to commit to a method for keeping the program solvent.

Both insisted they would fulfill their pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq regardless of the situation on the ground, and both said they would cut taxes for middle-class Americans. And neither would be pinned down on whether they supported the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, which is under review by the Supreme Court.

Obama, responding to moderator Charles Gibson of ABC, said, “Well, Charlie, I confess I obviously haven’t listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence.”

Asked the same question, Clinton replied, “I don’t know the facts.”

There’s just a top notch note to end on.

Answer- Someone needs to step down and they all need to learn how to fucking get along!

You’ll have to excuse me here for getting a little worked up, but seriously, WTF is going on?  It’s a wretched time to be an American.  We’ve got recession on tap, joblessness (can’t say unemployment because most jobless people have given up on looking for new job and filing for unemployment, so the numbers are going down) never-ending war, and the people we all hoped might be able to drag us out of this won’t get out of each other’s shit, unite, and try to actually do something good for the country and it’s people.  Like Bill Clinton said recently- “Chill out.”  (Only, he said it for the wrong cause.  Bill buddy, your wife is losing.  Get over it.)

Democrats… someone either stop Hillary, or tell Obama that he’s good, the people like him, but the machine wants him to wait his turn.  Because right now, the more the two candidates drag this out and go back and forth with each other, the longer McCain gets to be largely ignored by the media and come into the actual elections looking relatively good- as he’s spent months letting the Dems do the work of tearing themselves apart for him.

And Iraq… oh Iraq.  We need to talk.  There’s something that’s been bugging us lately, and it’s mostly got to do with the fact that you all really don’t want us around.  Well guess what?  We don’t really want to be there either, but unless you can get all your religious factions to unite around common love for your state, we’re not going to be allowed to leave because someone somewhere thinks we’re keeping the peace or something.  I don’t give a rats ass if you’re a sunni or shiite or kurd, or if the whole damn country decides to convert to scientology.  Don’t care.  But guess what, I don’t agree with what the psycho-right-wing-conservative-christian-led government we’ve got here is up to 99% of the time, but shooting up the joint isn’t really the best way to go about these things.  Especially where you’ve got psycho-right-wing-conservative-christian-cowboys like Dubbya involved in the show. 

Ok, militias, the top dog wants you all to lay down your arms.  Got it.  Welcome to every backwoods NRA member asshole’s compound up in the forests of bumfuck USA.  “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand”.  If you want to keep your guns, go hole up somewhere, shut up, and if you keep yours asses out of trouble, people will ignore you.  Then you can set up target practice ranges and fire off all the weapons you want.  al-Maliki, al-Sadr, you two need to sit down and work something out, or one of you has to take your people and go somewhere else.  It’s that simple.

And hey, we’ll accept blame.  We came into Iraq, we fucked it all up, factioned you guys up worse than before, and then played you all against each other so that we could claim we were working with the people to fight extremists. 

Look, we’d love to make things better for you guys, but haven’t you realized?  We can’t even figure out the relatively simple issue of our own country, which largely sits within the same political and religious spectrum, with a few easily workable differences (“in god we trust” is on the money, guess what- money IS the god we’re putting our trust in.  It’s got nothing to do with Jesus.  So atheists, I feel for you, but currency is the god we’re all kneeling to, you included.  Get over it.)  so how in the blue hell do you think we’re gonna be able to figure you guys out?  You all need to fix your damn country so we can pretend we had something to do with it, and leave feeling proud that we “stayed the course” or “accomplished the mission” or some other bumper sticker nonsense.

Which brings me back home…  Dems.  If you really want to fix America, start with yourselves.  If you’re not going to pull troops out, then say it.  Stop all the bullshit about pulling “combat forces” from Iraq, meaning you’ll be leaving just about everyone who’s over there now, because a large brunt of the forces are either support, or “peace keeping” or training.  And stop pretending you’re anything but politicians.  You’re not preachers, you’re not working class, you’re not heroes or victims… you’re politicians.  You’re walking talking scum sucking pieces of trash that unfortunately we need to run our country without us because the public that was supposed to be keeping tabs on things- decided to watch The Simple Life with Paris Hilton instead of caring about what’s going on in the economy (wish you’d paid atttention now don’t you?).  And for the love of god (read: $) settle down and pick just one person to run for President, because as bad as a Democrat might be in office… at least it wouldn’t be another Republican promising continued war and having no ideas in regards to domestic policies.  Sorry John, I can appreciate your past and all, but Iraq is a money pit, and we’re not really set up to “win” anything without sinking our country so deep it’ll never recover.

I know I’ve gotten off on a bit of a rant here today… but let’s face it, if you’re not pissed off- you’re not paying enough attention.

I’ve been grumpy over the stale mate between Obama and Clinton lately.  It’s really not all that exciting anymore.  I’m feeling a little run down by the constant name calling between the candidates (and the voters).  It’s just getting so… I dunno… blah. 

We just want a Democratic candidate!!

They say that technically, Clinton has no chance of winning.  Obama will statistically have more deletage votes. 

Newsweek broke it down for us a few weeks ago:

…no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people.

Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

So what good can come out of such a futile battle? Why should we be happy to bear witness to the bad blood developing between Obama and Clinton?

VOTER REGISTRATION.

Get this. 

Democratic voters and registrations are at an all time high.  The Democratic party is spanking the Republicans in voter turnouts and registrants.  For example, in Pennsylvania Democrats have topped 4 million registered voters, the first time either party in the state has crossed that threshold.  That’s a four percent increase.

The Republicans, on the other hand, lost nearly one percent to 3.2 million. 

What this means is that no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, the voters will be out en mass in November.

Look out McCain.  Here we come.

Source: Video and Transcript of Sen. Obama Speech, March 18, 2008

Admit it. You were intrigued when you heard that Sen. Obama would give a planned speech on race.

He was catching a lot of flack lately by the words of his pastor, Reverend Wright. Not to mention that throughout his campaign he’s had to deal with the elephant sitting in every room he’s walked into.

Not that the other candidates don’t have similar troubles.

Clinton’s elephant is her gender.

But I wondered to myself if it would be beneficial to focus a 30 minutes speech on something that may be best left on the wayside? Is putting the issue of race or gender or religion right into the faces of American voters a good thing, or, will it just stir the pot even more until everything boils over in a mess of argument and debate?

As it turns out, that sort of outcome is all in how the issue is addressed.

I settled in last night to watch the speech at the link above long after he had already given it live. (Didn’t he know it was a work day!? Who could be home to watch it in the early afternoon?) I swore to be as impartial as possible. I wanted to hear the speech with virgin ears.

The first line of his speech came off as cliche, “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union”. I feared the next 30 minutes would be line after line of recycled rhetoric and I found myself grateful to have the ability to ‘fast forward’.

To my relief, he went right into the meat of the issue shortly after his introduction.

Never before has genealogy been so interesting. Senator Obama detailed his lineage as having both black and white bloodlines. He touched upon the heritage of his wife who’s lineage takes her through the terrible line of slavery. And then he said a line that rang loudly inside of me:

I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

Oh yeah. That’s right. Have we forgotten how special our country is compared to others?

Our country still carries upon her shoulders the shame of slavery but also the pride of embracing mixed races and creeds together under one roof. We don’t always get along. We don’t always like each other. But we still manage to coincide together in relative peace.

Obama’s point was that there’s still work to be done.

Some thought this speech would make or break him. No. It didn’t come off that way at all.

Instead, I think it only reinforced his loyalty to America and his understanding of the complex issues of race within our society. Not to mention, he’s a damn good orator.

Is America ready for a black President? I think after hearing this speech, any clear and logically thinking American can safely answer yes.  Clear and logical thinking is the key.  The reality, though, is that there are many Americans who are jaded and illogical.  The most perfectly written speach won’t ever sway their opinions. 

Obama did right to address the issue head on and he explained himself with elegance.  But I don’t anticipate the speech swaying naysayers.  Race is an issue that goes beyond resolution from one speech.  If anything, the speech only further solidified Obama supporters.  That’s better than nothing, I suppose.

Another set of primaries in the bank- here’s what we know…

Mike Huckabee is out of the race and lined up behind John McCain pretty much confirming what has already been known to the American people- McCain is the all but confirmed Republican Presidential Candidate.

Hillary Clinton picks up wins in Texas (barely) and Ohio (solidly), staying in the fight against Barack Obama, though Obama retains his delegate lead due to the way delegates are divided up in Texas. The Democratic race is likely to continue all the way until the DNC.

Who will McCain pick as his running mate- and how much longer will it be until the Democratic candidate is decided (and who exactly will be the one deciding it?) are pretty much the only questions we have to ask today. So on it goes.

Tony Rezko, long time friend supporter, and fundraiser for Barack Obama is standing trial as of monday, for money laundering and extortion.

Prosecutors charge that Antoin “Tony” Rezko tried to extort millions of dollars in kickbacks from investment houses that wanted to do business with Illinois state boards. Jury selection started Monday.

As Rezko sat in a Chicago courtroom, Illinois Senator Obama was campaigning in Texas and answering questions by reporters about his relationship with Rezko. Obama said Rezko was a friend and supporter for many years, but that the charges facing him are not related to the senator.

Obama reportedly received $10,000 from a Rezko associate, which the Obama camp later donated to charity.

If ever there were an issue Obama’s opponents could try to use against him- this would be it. But the information has been there, and much like the claims that the IL Senator is all talk and no walk, and lacks experience, the negative statements and information appears to fall on deaf ears.

No politician is without their scandal, as the Clinton’s are well aware of, as is John McCain, so perhaps by not bringing this up too much, they’re also seeking to keep the suspect practices target off their backs?

Well see how things pan out for the candidates at today’s primaries.