Surge? What surge?
A suicide car bomber killed at least 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded dozens more people in Iraq's north on Sunday. Meanwhile, the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad came under fire from either mortars or rockets, and a round that fell short injured two bystanders.
The Easter Sunday attacks underscored the fragility of Iraq's security, despite a decline in violence over the past year. They also came as the U.S. military death toll in Iraq nears 4,000.
Iraqi security forces opened fire on the bomber as he drove toward the military base in the northwestern city of Mosul but were unable to foil the attack because the truck's windshield had been made bullet-proof.
Mark Halperin gives 14 reasons why Hillary Clinton cannot win the nomination; here are the first three:
- She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.
- She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.
- Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.
Moss, a South Carolina 5th grader, shaking hands with Barack Obama and Oprah:
Obama is on the air in PA:
The Barack barrage has begun.
With 31 days until the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Sen. Barack Obama yesterday began airing the first pre-primary ads on Philadelphia TV stations.
According to public records, the campaign spent about $330,000 on 30- and 60-second spots that will run on six area stations through Monday, the state deadline for voter registration.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, with a double-digit lead in state polls, has yet to hit local airwaves in the run-up to the April 22 primary. A total of 158 Democratic delegates are in play.
How well are the ads playing? How would you rate them?
Sign this petition asking the media to focus on the real issues at hand:
If Barack Obama can stay above political mudslinging when he's under attack, we, the voters can promise not to be distracted from the issues that really matter as well.
Tell the media that you're focused on the real difficulties facing our nation. Because you're sick of hypocritical political mudslinging that serves to divide our country and divert us from discussing the significant and very real problems that affect us every day.
Sign this petition because you're inspired by Obama's More Perfect Union speech -- it reminds us of what matters most to this country and the changes we desperately need. Health care, jobs heading overseas, global warming, a crashing economy, collapsing schools, and a never-ending war. These are things that matter to all of us whether we vote for Obama, Clinton, or McCain.
Last time we were distracted from the issues that matter to us we got George W. Bush and a trillion dollar war. Sign to tell the media and the world, "We won't be distracted. Not this time!"
Hillary in Tuzla -- A Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire!
Please consider watching the movie Beyond Belief. It is a story about two widows whose husbands were killed in Afghanistan and who went to that country in search of closure.
Please recommend this diary about a war protest in Memphis today.
It was at one of these events that Obama's star was born.
There were also protest marches in Berkley, CA.
Milwaukee
UFCW Local 1776 Endorses Obama:
The 23,000-member United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 has endorsed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for President in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary election.
Wendell W. Young, IV, President of Local 1776, said the endorsement by the union’s Executive Board was "overwhelming."
Young said that while Local 1776 has "the highest respect" for Senator Hillary Clinton, "our Executive Board is convinced that Senator Obama is the best candidate to unite our country and move it forward for good jobs, affordable health care, retirement security, worker rights and worker safety." He said:
"Senator Obama leads in the popular vote. He leads in the Democratic delegate count, and he leads in the head-to-head match-up against John McCain. Americans want a change very badly. Barack Obama is a fresh-thinking leader who will create that change."
UFCW Local 1776 represents 23,000 members throughout southeast, northeast and central Pennsylvania, northeast Maryland and southern New York who work in supermarkets, drug stores, food processing plants, manufacturing facilities, nursing homes, professional offices and Pennsylvania’s Wine and Spirits Shops.
Darcy Bruner's plan to end the occupation of Iraq is gathering extensive support among candidates. 23 different House candidates, two Senate candidates, and four retired generals have endorsed the plan which combines elements from the Feingold plan of setting a date certain as well as the Iraq Study Group. In the enlightenment business, it may be as easy as accepting that one already has all the knowledge of the universe within them and that elaborate works and ceremonies are not necessary. And in the peace business, making peace may well be as simple as just doing it -- setting a date certain and then leaving.
Bobby Kennedy on dissent:
"So when are told to forgo all dissent and division, we must ask; who is it that is truly dividing the country? It is not those who call for change; it is those who make present policy who divide our country; those who bear the responsibility of our present course; those who have removed themselves from the American tradition, from the enduring and generous impulses that are the soul of the nation.
Those who now call for an end to dissent, moreover, seem not to understand what this country is all about. For debate and dissent are the very heart of the American process. We have followed the wisdom of Greece: "All things are to be examined and brought into question. There is no limit to set thought."
"A second purpose of debate is to give voice and recognition to those without the power to be heard. There are millions of Americans living in hidden places, whose faces and names we never know. But I have seen the children starving in Mississippi, idling their lives away in the ghetto, living without hope or future amid the despair on Indian Reservations, with no jobs and little hope. I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalacia, who wish only to work in dignity; but the mines are closed, and the jobs are gone and no one, neither industry or labor or government, has cared enough to help. Those conditions will change, those children will live, only if we dissent. So I dissent, and I know you do too."
And we, too, must dissent against the corporate/military industrial complex that is threatening to rip away the fabric of our society. And that is what the Obama message is all about -- dissent from business as usual. It was dissent against a war that was based on lies. And now, it is dissent against the corporatists that once controlled the Democratic Party and who will give power back to the people and let the party return to their roots over their dead bodies.
This was not a coronation for Hillary, as much as she wanted it to be. What she did not recognize was that she had to earn her way to the nomination just like anyone else, and that meant reaching out to the Democratic base and relating to average people who were concerned about the rising death toll in Iraq and who were concerned about the rising gas prices.
Michael Boyle has an interesting article on Iraq:
One thing, at the very least, is clear: all of the initial reasons offered by George Bush and Tony Blair - weapons of mass destruction, democracy promotion or fear of nuclear terrorism - have turned out either to be factually incorrect or exaggerated. There were only pre-Gulf war chemical weapons and a latent ability to restart a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq; the links between Iraq and al-Qaida were fabricated, and the promise of a democratic revolution in the Middle East has been lost amid the bodies piling up in the streets of Baghdad. All of the grand political ambitions pinned to the Iraq war have been lost, as mismanagement, incompetence and a failure of leadership has turned the war into "a nightmare without end", in the words of one American general.
So did they lie? Among the left, it is now almost conventional wisdom that both Bush and Blair lied, knowing full well that no weapons of mass destruction existed. Yet this explanation - while appealing in its simplicity - never quite stands up to critical scrutiny. The notion that Bush and Blair committed an open and knowing lie in making their case for regime change suggests an unbelievable level of risk-taking on their part. Both leaders would face an election after their short and glorious war, and both had to know that the absence of WMD would cause a political firestorm and undercut their electoral chances. While they may have lacked decisive evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq, Bush and Blair must have assumed that the weapons existed and that evidence would appear once the war was over. The decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was then based on the belief that they would be vindicated in the future, even if they were not perfectly correct in the present.
However, I don't totally agree with this. The Downing Street Memo revealed that in fact Bush and Blair did exactly what Boyle says in incomprehensible -- take this kind of a brazen political gamble. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, John Dean explained that it was totally consistent with Bush's character to take these kinds of huge risks. They both knew that there were enormous political risks involved. They were both told that there was insufficient evidence for WMD's. But they went anyway.
Boyle continues:
In scaring their populations into war, both leaders also shattered many of the assumptions that we held about democratic states. We can no longer believe that liberal democracies avoid wars of aggression, or that they tend to fight only when absolutely necessary. We can also no longer assume that democratic governments will make careful and responsible arguments to their populations, or that governmental oversight and a healthy civil society will act as a check against fear-mongering. We can no longer rely on our open marketplace of ideas to ensure that suspicions are not treated as facts in our public discourse.
In the Iraq war, all of the lauded institutional safeguards of liberal democracies that are designed to stop recklessness and manipulation at the top levels of government also broke down. This in part accounts for the creeping sense of dread that was so evident during the march to war. With some noble exceptions, those we count on to keep those in power in check - the professional government agencies, the civil society, and the free press - either malfunctioned or bent quietly to the government's will. The war was going forward, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.
And this is what is at stake here in the 2008 election -- a John McCain presidency would be more of the same. He has already stated that he would attack Iran if elected. And he was even more hawkish on Iraq in the 2000 election than George Bush was. The problem is that he is too radical for this country, and for us to elect another warmonger who would continue the Bush plan of perpetual warfare and attack other countries would be a fiscal and economic disaster.
The whole world begged George Bush to stay his hand against Iraq. The whole world begged Hillary Clinton to lead the opposition to war. Both of them turned their backs on Barack Obama and millions of other Americans marching in the streets telling the President to stop the madness.
And an Obama presidency would restore Democracy to this country. He would strengthen the press through attacking corporate consolidation and protecting Net Neutrality. He would give professional government agencies the resources they needed to do their jobs. He would strengthen civil society through participatory democracy; he has already passed a bill creating a website showing where government is spending your money. He would also set up a public comment period where he would wait five days for people to comment before signing legislation. We would no longer be passive receptacles of information, but active participants in our futures.
Barack Obama on gas prices:
1,500 new registrations in Chester County, PA alone:
This is just a little warning for the pundits, the pollsters, and I guess for the Clinton campaign, too. I dropped by the Obama Headquarters in West Chester, Pennsylvania today to drop off some voter registrations (the deadline to register is tomorrow). And I discovered that they had a box of new registrations that had been collected by volunteers in Chester County on Saturday. The box contained approximately 1,500 new registrations. These were all collected yesterday alone.
It is just staggering. I have no idea how the effort is going in other counties, but I don't think Chester Co. is all that unusual. And those registrations were vetted, meaning there is reason to believe that every one of them belongs to a person that is at least leaning towards Obama.
Kristol claimed that Hagee and Parsley merely endorsed John McCain as individuals:
On Fox News Sunday, when Bill Kristol was asked whether "it's fair" to compare "[Sen. John] McCain's, quote, 'ministers,' " John Hagee and Rod Parsley, "to [Sen. Barack] Obama's pastor," Kristol replied: "No, because these are just individuals who've endorsed Senator McCain." However, McCain stated in a joint appearance with Hagee that he was "very proud to have Pastor Hagee's support" and reportedly called Parsley a "spiritual guide."
Matthews followed suit. But this undermines the argument made by some Clinton supporters that McCain does not have a long relationship with Hagee or Parsley like Obama does with Wright. In fact, John McCain himself said otherwise. Therefore, these Clinton supporters are guilty of selective outrage when attacking Obama over the Wright issue because John McCain is doing the exact same thing. He said so himself.
We have a fundmamental choice in this election between two people, McCain and Clinton, who have preachers who subscribe to a radical right-wing apocalyptic agenda, and one person, Barack Obama, who has a preacher who is divisive at times, but who also is a searing voice of hurt and anger at all of the racism that has happened in this country over the last few centuries. And Obama has taken the message of hurt, anger, and divisiveness that Wright preached, and turned it into a message of hope and national reconciliation.
Freshman Congressman and Obama supporter Patrick Murphy has written a new book called "Taking the Hill." Please consider ordering this book. Murphy has been one of Barack Obama's supporters from the start, endorsing him in August 2007. He is one of the leaders in the House in pushing for legislation to end the occupation of Iraq.