http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/04/barackobama

... It's not that Obama doesn't know the anodyne, wifely things to say
(essentially, nothing). She is, after all, a 'community and external
affairs' professional. But her pride visibly chafes at being...

People Exclusive
John & Elizabeth Edwards: What We Like (and Dislike) About Clinton &
Obama
By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall
Originally posted Monday May 05, 2008 05:10 PM EDT
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20197952,00.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120994756511766395.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Obama Says Teamsters Need Less Oversight
By BRODY MULLINS and KRIS MAHER
May 5, 2008; Page A1

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this
year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict
federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to
officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers
have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an
independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence
in the union.

Sen. Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary
Clinton, has declined to take a stance on Teamsters oversight. During
his eight years in office, President Bill Clinton took no action to
end the special board. Democratic presidential nominees in 2000 and
2004 -- Al Gore and John Kerry -- didn't address the issue, according
to Teamsters officials...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/26/83118/7371/654/503796

Mythic Obama
by mjjt
Sat Apr 26, 2008 at 07:48:02 AM PDT

People have always regarded comets as "messengers of the gods". The
meaning ascribed to a comet's appearance is comprised of many factors,
including the mythological story of the constellation that the comet's
path highlights. This past autumn (2007), a remarkable comet,
Holmes, appeared in the nightime sky, as a huge blue sphere (larger
than the diameter of our sun). It's path of maximal brightness
carried it through the constellation of Perseus, crossing in front of
two of that constellation's stars in particular- Mirfak, and Algol.
Pleases join me below the fold to explore this myth's relevance for
our own time.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=63153

Saturday, May 03, 2008
Uh-oh, here we go again: Meet Obama's new pastor
Otis Moss compares Wright to Jesus, backs up predecessor on AIDS,
drugs
By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – More pastor problems for Sen. Barack Obama?

The man slated to become chief pastor at the Trinity United Church of
Christ has called blacks "lepers" with a "skin disease," claimed U.S.
entertainment corporations operate with "disdain" for black people,
and in a fiery sermon claimed retired pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright was
"lynched" by the media and compared the embattled pastor to Jesus.

Otis Moss III, lauded this week by Obama as a "wonderful young
pastor," also recently refused to deny claims by Wright that the U.S.
government was involved in distributing illegal drugs to minorities or
spreading the AIDS virus to blacks.

The 37-year-old Moss, nicknamed the "hip-hop pastor" by congregants,
will become the head of Trinity Christ in June, taking over for
Wright, whose controversial remarks landed Obama in hot water.

Saturday, May 3, 2008
To Obama, 'we' means 'me'
MARK STEYN

Four score and seven years ago … No, wait, my mistake. Two score and
seven or eight days ago, Barack Obama gave the greatest speech since
the Gettysburg Address, or FDR's First Inaugural, or JFK's religion
speech, or (if, like Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books, you
find those comparisons drearily obvious) Lincoln's Cooper Union speech
of 1860.

And, of course, the senator's speech does share one quality with
Cooper Union, Gettysburg, the FDR Inaugural, Henry V at Agincourt,
Socrates' Apology, etc.: It's history. He said, apropos the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, that "I could no more disown him than I can disown my
white grandmother." But last week Obama did disown him. So, great-
speech-wise, it's a bit like Churchill promising to fight them on the
beaches and never surrender, and then surrendering a month and a half
later, and on a beach he decided not to fight on.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/its_obamas_character_stupid.html
May 02, 2008
It's Obama's Character, Stupid
By Kyle-Anne Shiver

I picked up a copy of Time magazine yesterday, in which a columnist
declared that issues of "character" were a "distraction" in the
Presidential race. Obama actually said the same thing in his North
Carolina press conference, that the Reverend Wright affair has been a
"distraction."

Isn't this what liberals usually say when their own characters come
under public scrutiny?

What a heap of pure poppycock!

Character is the primary issue in every Presidential election.

Period.

And we, the voters, have an inalienable right to know the specifics,
as much as can be discerned, of a candidate's character.

But don't take my word for that. Take John Adams' words on the
matter:

http://www.progressive.org/mag_reed0508/

Obama No
By Adolph Reed Jr., May 2008 Issue

I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very
beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat
in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous
opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white
liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political
center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and
new directions, is neoliberal.

His political repertoire has always included the repugnant stratagem
of using connection with black audiences in exactly the same way Bill
Clinton did—i.e., getting props both for emoting with the black crowd
and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming “tough love”
message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor black
communities. Because he’s able to claim racial insider standing, he
actually goes beyond Clinton and rehearses the scurrilous and
ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made infamous.

Yeah, he was just one of them poor Okies!

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080430/NRSTAFF/645849067
To the question of why his support seemed to flag among working-class
white men, Obama appeared to have put behind him the flap over his
remarks about small-town voters being "bitter." He spoke of his own
rural Kansas upbringing, and confidently ticked off a list of
primaries where he did prevail in middle America, places where he said
voters were "hungry" for a change from the "divisive politics of the
past."

I am getting tired of seeing the police and the Highway Patrol talk
about cracking down on speeders because (they say) speeding is the
leading cause of accidents and deaths.

I am getting pissed about it because in all the tickets I have received
for speeding over the years, half are a crock. I got a ticket because
the officer's radar went off and he looked up from his newspaper and saw
my car - missing the actual car that set off his or her radar. But I
never caused an accident when I speed. But no one offers to drop my
speeding ticket simply because I didn't cause an actual accident.

This pisses me off even more because someone was driving the wrong way
down a limited access road and hit me - wrecking my car and causing me
serious injury. The driver got a ticket for driving the wrong way down
a one-way street, but the driver got the ticket dismissed when her
insurance company wrote the DA a letter saying they would accept
financial responsibility for the accident.

And on top of that - if you need to go to court to collect on personal
injury damages, you don't have a finding of cause to rely on in the
civil trial.