The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor, was impressive in a thoughtful hour-long interview on PBS Friday. He explained how the snippets of video excerpted from a couple his old sermons and played over and over on cable TV shows were taken out of context to portray him – and by extension, Obama – as unpatriotic and fanatical. Unfortunately, most Americans probably didn’t watch that interview. Instead, they will hear more sound bites from his weekend NAACP speech or his speech today to the National Press Club – such as his refusal to condemn Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
Karl Rove – bless his heart – offered Barack Obama some tips on how to get his mojo back. They included redoing his stump speech, stopping the political attacks and talking more about his policy proposals. “Americans want to see your passion and commitment to things they care about, in ways that give them confidence you’re up to the job,” Rove wrote.
But Obama’s campaign already has retooled. Rather than holding so many of the giant campaign events, Obama is doing more town hall-style meetings and is reminding voters of his modest upbringing and his work as a community organizer. And as Rove recommended, he is backing off criticism of Hillary Clinton.
Until now, the calls to “drop out†have been directed at Hillary Clinton, whose road to the Democratic nomination has a math problem. Recognizing she won’t do that, Slate writer Chris Wilson calls for Barack Obama to bail, saying that “if he’s really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he’ll be elected president in 2012.†According to Wilson’s scenario: Obama regains “his messiah creds by making the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the party.†His followers are so furious that they refuse to help Clinton, who loses in November. The base then turns its ire on current party leaders, allowing Obama to install his loyalists and deny John McCain re-election in 2012.
John McCain on the stump is proposing $650 million a year in tax cuts, a move that would either swell the federal deficit or lead to drastic cuts in domestic spending, according to a Wall Street Journal article.
McCain’s tax cut plan, “much of it benefiting corporations and upper-income families,†also would make permanent the Bush tax cuts (in a former life as a deficit hawk, he voted against them twice).
McCain says he would cut $160 billion annually from the federal budget to pay for the revenue loss, but few believe that’s possible — the figure is equal to the total 2007 expenditures of the departments of Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice and State.
It’s not just China and India who are building scores of new coal-fired plants. Despite their green image, European countries are planning to build some 50 coal-fired plants in the next five years, according to the New York Times.
Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic and Great Britain — lured by rising oil and natural gas prices and cheap coal — all have new “clean†coal-fired plants in the works, despite scientists’ growing alarm over climate change.
Like their U.S. counterparts, the plant owners tout “clean coal†technology, but the reality is that commercial technology for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide remains years away — and may never be feasible.
Without a moratorium on new coal plants, warns prominent climate scientist James Hansen of NASA, controlling climate change may be impossible.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor, was impressive in a thoughtful hour-long interview on PBS Friday. He explained how the snippets of video excerpted from a couple his old sermons and played over and over on cable TV shows were taken out of context to portray him – and by extension, Obama – as unpatriotic and fanatical. Unfortunately, most Americans probably didn’t watch that interview. Instead, they will hear more sound bites from his weekend NAACP speech or his speech today to the National Press Club – such as his refusal to condemn Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
