Benny's World

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Madam Clinton's Campaign Pimping for Votes

Out of the NYT this evening:

Clinton Setting a $1 Million Goal for Donors

By PATRICK HEALY and JEFF ZELENY
Published: February 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is establishing record-setting goals for presidential campaign fund-raising, her advisers say, asking donors to raise at least $1 million for the honor of being in her top echelon of supporters.

That million-dollar benchmark is 10 times the amount that President Bush’s “Pioneers” were expected to raise in his 2000 race; at that time, the Pioneers’ $100,000 goal was considered sizable.

and Charles Schumer is on Charlie Rose's show, also pimping for her. It smells of corporate money, not the people's.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Flag for Molly Ivins, A True Texas Progressive


On the eve of two fine feminists, including Amanda Marcotte, who lives in Austin, hired by the Edwards campaign, Molly Ivins passed away after a long battle with cancer.

I will write more about this since I've been following Molly's writing for a long time.

She's with her sister Ann Richards.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013107U.shtml

and from the Texas Observer:

I have a grandly dramatic vision of myself stalking through the canyons of the Big Apple in the rain and cold, dreaming about driving with the soft night air of East Texas rushing on my face while Willie Nelson sings softly on the radio, or about blasting through the Panhandle under a fierce sun and pale blue sky….I’ll remember, I’ll remember…sunsets, rivers, hills, plains, the Gulf, woods, a thousand beers in a thousand joints, and sunshine and laughter. And people. Mostly I’ll remember people.

There is one thing, an important thing, I have to tell you before I go. What I’m going to tell you is more than a fact. It is a Truth. I have spent six years checking it out, and I know it to be true. The people who subscribe to The Texas Observer are good people. In fact, you’re the best people in this state. I don’t care if you think that’s pretentious or sentimental—it’s just true.

If I got to naming you, I would never stop, so I won’t. But please believe me that all of you whom I know and many of you whom I know only by letter are in my mind as I write this—even if I do forget your names half the time. Always excepting, of course, the turkey who sends me hate mail after my annual gun-control editorial. Turkey, turkey, turkey.

I wanted to call this “The Long Goodbye” but Kaye won’t let me. She wanted to call it “Ivins Indulges in Horrible Fit of Sentimentality.”

I love you. Good-bye my friends.



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Netrooting Fems to join Edwards' Virtual Campaign

Yesterday, it was announced on the JE08 blog that Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon was joining the Edwards campaign as their blogmeister. Most of her Pandagon readers were thrilled, but as usual snarks are there. I won't even bother to link today's snarks.

Word on the street is that Melissa McEwan, aka Shakes of Shakespeare's Sister, is also joining as Netroots Coordinator.

All of this ties nicely with the message that Edwards cares about women's issues when Kate Michelman, former head of NARAL, decided to join as a senior advisor earlier this month.

This just in...Shakes is in the Edwards camp. She'll make a great addition to the net Train.

More buzz l8tr...

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Monday, January 29, 2007

Being Patriotic on Something Besides War

John and Elizabeth Edwards went to Wilkes-Barre to help a family winterize their house. It was a great opportunity to help a family in need and to take action via One Corps.




I belong to a OneCorps chapter, and I hope we will do something soon. Meantime, I'm looking into inquiring about recycle bins for larger apartment units.

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Iowans Worry about Things Others May Not

This morning I was cruising through the Des Moines Register. In a poll conducted this past week, many of them think that the US is ready for a woman or African-American president. That bodes well for Madam Clinton and Mr. Obama.

But the same poll revealed their top 5 concerns: Iraq war, Social Security, immigration, health care policy and the last one, which bears some merit: moral values.

The results of that poll are surprising for two reasons: (one) those were key issues that were brought up first at the Town Hall I attended in Des Moines at John Edwards' kick off campaign, but (second) Charles Grassley is viewed more favorably in job approval than Mr. Harkin, also according to the DMR this morning. Mr. Grassley has been on record in supporting the Mc Cain Doctrine, privatizing Social Security, and I wouldn't doubt he supports the President's new health insurance tax on everyone considering he pushed forward the bankruptcy bill, making it easier for credit card companies to jack up their rates and try to squeeze the small business man who may depend on that kind of credit, or the single mom who had a child with a major illiness and couldn't afford her house payments anymore.

Moral values. I guess Mr. Grassley doesn't see poverty as a moral issue as many evangelicals do.

Then there is this editorial in the LA Times: that was lead off for the WJ segment of C-SPAN this morning:

Anyone but a Bush or a Clinton
The U.S. needs a leader in 2008 who doesn't inherit the office because of a last name.

The nation needs today, as it got in Ford then, a president respected by both Republicans and Democrats who can restore trust in politics. It needs new faces and new ideas if it is to confront advancing crises of war, debt and entitlement reform. And it needs a president who can assume office in 2009 swimming in the political capital that only a mandate can bring. The nation needs a candidate who can win 55% or more.

And that will not happen with a Bush or Clinton on the ballot.

LINK

Edwards has said many times that the world is looking to us to be the leader again. It takes intellect, backbone, and courage, and moral conviction. It takes someone to say "I was wrong", not just "I'm responsible for my vote", as Madam Clinton did yesterday in Des Moines. It takes a loving family in which there is no doubt that the husband and wife are best friends and have the kind of loving trust that is born out of the heart, not just for political reasons. That BW readers, is one of many things that separates Madam Clinton from John Edwards: moral values. Mind you, I like President Bill Clinton, but I am very suspicious of another Clinton administration that favors more corporate welfare while saying saying they worry about those whose wages are stagnant. Lest Madam Clinton forgets that it was John Edwards' speech in the hearings that swayed enough people from a "guilty" vote for lying to a grand jury about his indiscretions.




I never wonder whom John would rather be at home with at night. I don't think Iowans do either.







Photo credit: Joshua Brown, taken at TH in Iowa City, 1/20/2007

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