Wednesday, December 31, 2008

America: In the Final Throes - Legacy's future holt!

New Rules of Engagement. World wide! The individual signifies the shift in the rules of engagement. The Zeitgeist. Ready or Not!

Disembarking from the painful past of yesterday, will not be an easy task. As so many are basking in the signal of a "new day". The struggle of yesterday implodes in our midst.

Attempts will be made to deploy old tactics of a now defunct time. Too force the hand of today, back in to yesterday. Tensions come and go. How it is handled is what counts.

Like it or not, we're here now! And there's no turning back! hlr

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Rode it Out!!!


minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. A defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket.

Obama's victory set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a 46-year-old opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.

Obama, a first-term Illinois senator who was virtually unknown on the national stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the former first lady and one-time campaign front-runner, in a 17-month marathon for the Democratic nomination.

His victory had been widely assumed for weeks. But Clinton's declaration of interest in becoming his ticketmate was wholly unexpected.

She expressed it in a conference call with her state's congressional delegation after Rep. Nydia Velazquez, predicted Obama would have great difficulty winning the support of Hispanics and other voting blocs unless the former first lady was on the ticket.

"I am open to it" if it would help the party's prospects in November, Clinton replied, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was private.

Obama's campaign had no reaction to Clinton's comments, which raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats have called a "Dream Ticket" that would put a black man and a woman on the same ballot.

The fast-paced developments unfolded as the long Democratic nominating struggle ended with primaries in Montana and South Dakota.

Only 31 delegates were at stake, the final few among the thousands that once drew Obama, Clinton and six other Democratic candidates into the campaign to replace President Bush and become the nation's 44th president.

Obama arranged an evening appearance in St. Paul, Minn., sending McCain an unmistakable message by claiming his victory in the very hall where the Arizonan will accept his party's nomination in early September.

Clinton was in New York for an appearance before home-state supporters. Officials said she would concede Obama had the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, effectively ending her bid to be the nation's first female president.

McCain, who wrapped up the Republican nomination months ago, campaigned in Memphis.

Obama sealed his nomination based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates' public declarations as well as support from 22 delegates and "superdelegates" who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer.

The young senator's success amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved.

Obama stood for hope, and change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready, she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.

Together, they drew record turnouts in primary after primary — more than 34 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as well as Democrats.

Yet the race between a black man and a woman exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

Obama drew strength from blacks, and from the younger, more liberal and wealthier voters in many states. Clinton was preferred by older, more downscale voters, and women, of course.

Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy — all harnessed to his own gifts as an inspirational speaker.

With her husband's two White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready to be commander in chief.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became a political phenomenon.

"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night of victory in Des Moines.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the past generation.

"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.

It was not a mistake they made again — which helped explain Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball courts and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals fell away in winter, Obama and Clinton traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations. But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and he proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.

Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won in six of the next nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.

It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.

Personality issues rose and receded through the campaign:

Clinton's husband, the former president, campaigned tirelessly for her but sometimes became an issue himself, to her detriment.

And Obama struggled to minimize the damage caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an issue likely to be raised anew by Republicans in the fall campaign.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Ride it Out!!

Obama Riding IT out!!

2 April 2008
- Bryant Purvis prelim May 6, 2008, Theodore McCoy & Marcus Jones forced to pay child support for "incarcerated sons." Melissa Bell in Judge J P Mauffray's
Court May 5, to be forced to pay child support.

Obama ridicules notion of VP slot

3/10/2008, 2:37 p.m. CDTBy CHARLES BABINGTON The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Miss. (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama ridiculed the idea of being Hillary Rodham Clinton's running mate Monday, saying voters must choose between the two for the top spot on the fall ticket.

The Illinois senator used his first public appearance of the week to knock down the notion that he might accept the party's vice presidential nomination. He noted that he has won more states, votes and delegates than Clinton so far. [It Happened in Memphis]

"I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is first place," Obama said, drawing cheers and a long standing ovation from about 1,700 people in Columbus, Miss.

Saying he wanted to be "absolutely clear," he added: "I don't want anybody here thinking that somehow, 'Well, you know, maybe I can get both.' Don't think that way. You have to make a choice in this election."

"I am not running for vice president," Obama said. "I am running for president of the United States of America."

Obama aides said Clinton's recent hints that she might welcome him as her vice presidential candidate appeared meant to diminish him and to attract undecided voters in the remaining primary states by suggesting they can have a "dream ticket."

Obama had never suggested he might accept a second spot on the ticket. But until Monday he had not ridiculed the notion so directly, even if he did completely rule it out in Shermanesque terms.

He told the audience that it made no sense for Clinton to suggest he is not ready to be president and then hint that she might hand him the job that could make him president at a moment's notice. Keepers of the DREAM! Or has this been a nightmare?

"If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?" he said, as the crowd laughed and cheered loudly.

Mississippi holds it primary Tuesday, the last contest before the Pennsylvania primary six weeks from now.

Clinton and her husband, the former president, had suggested recently that a Clinton-Obama ticket would be popular and formidable against Republican Sen. John McCain in November.

Many political activists discounted the notion all along. They noted that the two senators lack a warm relationship and, more important, that Obama would be ill-served by hinting he might accept the vice presidential slot when he holds the lead in delegates and hopes to win the presidential nomination.

In the latest Associated Press count, Obama leads Clinton, 1,578-1,472. He has won 28 contests to her 17.
Moreover, many insiders feel the ambitious and fast-rising Obama would chafe in the vice president's job, especially in a White House where Bill Clinton would almost surely play a huge advisory role.

Still, the notion of a Clinton-Obama ticket has received ample discussion in recent days on cable TV news shows and newspapers such as New York City's tabloids.

In an interview Friday in Wyoming with KTVQ-TV, a CBS affiliate based in Billings, Mont., Obama's comments were somewhat mixed.

"Well, you know, I think it's premature," he said of accepting the second spot on the ticket. "You won't see me as a vice presidential candidate."

His Monday remarks were more detailed, pointed and humorous.

Of course, they will not completely end the speculation. Presidential candidates routinely disavow any interest in the vice presidential spot. But some, including John Edwards and Al Gore, change their minds when they fall short of their top goal. Keepers of the DREAM! Or What?!!2 April 2008