Captain’s Quarters posted a video today that put together clips from Reese Witherspoon’s movie Election (1999) and clips of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. Depending on how you look at it, the video can either be either quite funny or a little bit scary. Either way, I’m sure you will laugh at least once while you are watching it.
According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Mike Huckabee has a slight lead over McCain in the Missouri Republican Primary. Huckabee and McCain are basically tied, each receiving 27% and 26% respectively but Huckabee has something that McCain doesn’t have. According to the same poll, Huckabee also had a higher percentage of those who said they were “certain” that they would vote Huckabee.
In Missouri, Huckabee’s support is a bit more solid than McCain’s. Among those who currently support the former Arkansas Governor, 63% are “certain” they will vote for him on election day. Just 56% of McCain’s supporters are that certain. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Romney supporters say the same about their candidate.
Mike Huckabee is viewed favorably by 70% of Likely Republican Primary Voters while 67% offer such a positive assessment of McCain. Giuliani gets favorable reviews from 60% while Romney’s favorable ratings are at 58%. Ron Paul is viewed favorably by just 24%.
Israel has been taking a lot of flak in the news this past week due to it stopping the normal flow of commercial goods into the Gaza Strip. Many have said that this Israeli “blockade” eventually led to a blackout throughout Gaza. However, when looking at the facts more closely, one will find that the terrorist organization Hamas is actually responsible for the outage. Take a look at what Bob Owens from Pajamas Media has to say about this:
By Sunday evening, Gaza City was in a complete blackout. And of course, it was Israel’s fault. Or was it?
Hamas spokesmen blamed Israel for the power shortage, claiming that they were forced to shut down power because of a fuel shortage brought about by the blockade. That same night, Al Jazeera began live broadcasts of a “spontaneous” candlelight protest in a darkened Gaza. The heart-wrenching images were broadcast throughout the Arab world and picked up by wire services and cable news outlets internationally.
It was great theater, but it was far from accurate news reporting. Gaza was not without electrical power during that time, and both the darkness and the candlelight protests were the results of a calculated ploy by Hamas.
The Gaza Strip receives 70 percent of its electricity from the Israeli Electric Company (IEC) (perhaps the only power company in the world regularly attacked by their customers.) Egyptian power companies chip in another five percent. The energy flowing into Gaza from Israel and Egypt, and making up three-quarters of Gaza’s power supply never ceased and never slowed during the “blackout.”
And who is responsible for these blatant falsehoods being paraded as facts worldwide? If you guessed the MSM then you are correct. Remember: a little bit a skepticism can often help you find a whole lot of truth.
IMAO posted an article that put the Presidential Climate Action Projects top ten goals in laymen’s terms. This article would be really funny if it wasn’t so true. Here is my favorite goal:
1) Recognize that climate change transcends politics and partisanship.
Code for “Republicans need to shut the hell up so that we can inflict our superior wisdom on the benighted masses.”
It seems as if a series of bombings in Europe has been stopped after the bombers were detained in Barcelona according to The Daily Telegraph.
A GROUP of alleged Islamist extremists were planning a wave of suicide attacks across Europe before they were detained in Barcelona last weekend.
The group intended to carry out three attacks in Spain and one each in Portugal, France and Germany, an unnamed man who infiltrated the group told top-selling daily El Pais.
The report comes one day after Spanish judicial sources said that three of the six members of the group, who allegedly planned to blow themselves up, were still at large.
The preferred targets were public transportation networks, especially metro systems because of the difficulty which emergency services would have in reaching the injured there, according to the newspaper.
Ed Morrissey from Captain’s Quarters has a post about what message this should send the rest of the world.
What do Spain, Portugal, France, and Germany have in common? None of them belong to our fighting coalition in Iraq. None of them contribute combat troops to the hot zones in Afghanistan, either. In fact, only Spain among these nations ever did contribute combat troops, in Iraq, and they withdrew them after the bombings in Madrid in March 2004. It seems that retreat didn’t keep the jihadis from targeting Spain again.
This shows — again — that appeasement and retreat does not sate the bloodthirstiness of radical Islamist terrorists. It only makes them more confident of their ability to cow their opponents into concessions. They want to continue murdering non-Muslims (and Muslims) until they can triumph over the West and take their ordained place as our masters in the worldwide Caliphate.
Yesterday, to complete my week long democratic primary coverage, I attended John Edwards’ primary watch party in Columbia, South Carolina. To be quite honest, I would have preferred going to to Barack Obama’s watch party but I was told that you had to have a ticket to get in. Getting a ticket wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that you have to be in Obama data base to get one. I’m sorry, but that is one thing I just couldn’t do. Since all of you know what the results are and quite possibly heard Edwards’ speech, this post will be fairly short. There are just a few things that I want to point out that probably weren’t covered by the media.
When I got there around 7:30, the party had already been going on for a half hour. It was being held at a local restaurant/bar that had an open area where a stage could set up for Edwards to give a speech at the end of the night. This was a very small venue but, to be honest, I don’t think he would have needed much more room. One thing that you definitely noticed right when you walked into the room were the two big flags located behind the stage. This seemed to be an upgrade from the single flag he had the day before.
Another thing I notice at this primary watch party was a guy in a monkey suit walking around the room. Shortly after I first saw him, he was joined by several other people in animal suits. I had heard that these same people had been at the University of South Carolina’s student union earlier that day but no one really knew why they were there. They all had buttons on that said “Hail to the Chimp” which is in reference to this website. I visited the site and still have no idea what their political agenda is. If you happen to figure it out, please leave a comment informing the rest of us.
By 8:45, the results were basically set in stone and the majority of people had gathered to hear Edwards give his speech. Around 9:10, the campaign staffers began ushering people onto the stage in preparation for his speech. Edwards’ national campaign manager David Boiner was up first to give a speech. One interesting thing about his speech was that he put a very moral spin on it. For example, he called everyone there his “brothers and sisters.” I don’t know, maybe this is standard nowadays in place of calling everyone “friends” but it still sounded a little weird. If you want to watch Boiner’s speech, you can view it here.
One of the few interesting things that occurred last night happened when a younger Latino man interrupted one of the guest speakers. He yelled out something to the affect that John Edwards’ campaign better bring on some more young people and Latinos if it wanted a chance at winning California. A campaign staffer immediately ran over and quieted the man and the guest speaker continued his speech while the staffer talked to the man for about a minute. The man was allowed to stay and didn’t cause any more disruptions the rest of the night.
John Edwards was late getting to his party. Not too late but late enough that the speakers before him acknowledged his lateness and lengthened their speeches accordingly. This brings me to a question: where are the candidates if they aren’t at their own watch parties? This isn’t just about Edwards but about all the candidates. I really think it would be cool if the candidates would actually be at their watch parties and mingle with the crowds. That would really give the sense that they care about their supporters. Honestly, what better way is there to connect with your constituents than being with them when the results come in.
Edward’s actual speech was short (roughly five minutes) and basically just reaffirmed his campaign promises. Nothing really new was said in the speech but if you want to watch it you can view it here:
John Edwards’ SC Primary Watch Party Speech
This concludes my week long coverage of the South Carolina Democratic coverage. Am I sad its over? Not really. I can now focus on other interesting topics that I kind have been putting on the shelf. Hope you enjoyed the articles.
Huckabee’s campaign seems to be still alive and going strong after it was able to raise $1 million dollars in just over six days. Why is this fairly amazing? Well, for one thing, many people had discounted Huckabee from the race because of his second place finish in South Carolina last Saturday. This extreme outpouring of financial support sure points to the idea that Huckabee still has a strong support base. So for all you Huckabee supporters out there, thank you and keep up the good work.
Yesterday, I went to see John Edwards speak at a Townhall style Q&A session in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. Don’t think that just because it was at the convention center that the room we met in was big because it wasn’t. It was a fairly small room that was filled to capacity by 12:30, the time the event was supposed to start. The one thing that you immediately noticed was the GIGANTIC American flag located on the wall conveniently behind where Edwards would be standing. Most politicians have a lot of flags behind them when they speak but I guess Edwards motto is “bigger is always better.” Which, coincidentally, is the same motto he uses when referring to the government.
The event was sponsored by SAVE (Student Association for Voter Empowerment) a nonprofit that works to create events, such as this, that make presidential candidates accessible to the public. Their main goal was to show young adults that presidential candidates are accessible and show presidential candidates that students do care. I don’t know if the number of students present was satisfactory to them because there were roughly 30 students out of the hundred or so people there. If they wanted more students attend, my suggestions to them would be to 1) hold it on the University of South Carolina campus and 2) not have the meeting right in the middle of the school day. I myself chose to skip class to go there and I’m sure that most students wouldn’t have made the same sacrifice.
Edwards started off the event by having a roughly ten minute long speech before the Q&A began. In his speech, he first attacked the “New York and Chicago style of politics of personal attacks” by saying that South Carolina deserves better than that. He then went on to attack Hillary for not staying in South Carolina longer to campaign and meet the people. Later on he stated in his speech that he is the only democratic candidate that is against building more nuclear power plants plus placing a moratorium on building any more coal power plants. Towards the end of this introductory speech, he reminded everyone that he has never “taken a dime” from lobbyist or special interest groups. He concluded this speech by saying that everyone there needs to get out and vote for him come tomorrow. If you want to watch the entire thing, I have it split up here into two separate sections:
John Edwards Introductory Speech (Part 1)
John Edwards Introductory Speech (Part 2)
After this introduction speech, the questions started. First off, the two sponsors asked him four quick questions. The first question had to do with how people should find accurate information about the candidates in a 30-second sound bite world. His answer to that was basically the internet, which I’m sure is an answer all of you who are reading this can agree with. Heh. Bet you never thought you would agreed with Edwards on anything. Don’t feel too bad, I never thought I would either. The next question was what will Edwards do to help our economy. You know what the first item on his list of things he would do is? Invest in building green infrastructure. Yeah, I was also confused on why that was number one item on his list.
The next question asked was about what he will do to ensure that the Roe v. Wade ruling stays the way it is. He stated the same mantra liberals have been spouting for the past 25 years about it being a woman’s right and such. He then states that “nobody made me God” and he doesn’t feel that it is the government’s role to to tell woman what they have to do. However, as one would expect, he doesn’t seem so hesitant to allow the government to intervene in other areas of our lives.
There is one last topic in his Q&A that I feel needs to be addressed. At one point midway through the second to last question (Part 4 of Q&A), Edwards brought up George Bush and how Bush keeps saying the war is going well when, in fact, it is going poorly. Well, I hate to be the one to break it to Edwards, but the war in Iraq does seem to be taking a turn for the better. I know, I really am sorry Edwards, but you won’t be able to use the war for your advantage. Here are two previous articles about how there is real success in Iraq and that the surge is working.
Edwards also tried to point out that the support for the Iraq War has been continually dropping when, in the past six months, support has actually risen. For example, when a CNN poll asked the public how they thought the war was going in Iraq, 38% said moderately well. That is a 12 percent increase from June! Better yet, those who thought the war was going very badly dropped from 44% in June to 23% this January. Another thing to keep in mind is that these percentages are respectively the highest and lowest percentages since June of 2006. So I am terribly sorry Mr. Edwards, you are wrong. America has not rejected the idea that we are doing well in Iraq and public opinion is definitely moving towards more support of the war than against it.
To view all the questions and answers, you can see the links below:
After his Q&A session was finally over, several reporters present seemed to be in a mad dash to find students to interview. My friends and I were stopped by a couple and summarily interviewed. I, for one, learned a valuable lesson today: always find out who the reporter is working for before agreeing to give an interview, especially a video one. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a quote from me ending up on the Huffington Post because I was interviewed by a lady freelancing for HuffPo. This fact wasn’t revealed to me until after I had given her my interview, name, and party affiliation.
Also, a reporter from The Palestra did a video interview with me which can be viewed here. Now, in my three minute interview, my main focus was informing her on why I support Mike Huckabee over John Edwards, but of course this isn’t the section they use in the clip. Nope, they decide to use the part where I am saying that John Edwards’ speech today was “on message” which, in fact, is true. This sound bite taken by itself may seem like I was a supporter of Edwards when, in fact, nothing could be farther than the truth. When I say he was “on message,” I mean he was on the same crazy message he has been preaching for a while. This craziness in turn made the speech pretty entertaining which is why I enjoyed watching it.
So if you take anything from this blog entry, let it be this: never give an interview if you don’t know who you are interviewing for and be ready to be misinterpreted. If you can handle these two things than feel free to tell the reporters whatever they want. I, for one, will stick to my blogs. At least when I quote someone, I try to include the whole speech.
For those of you who though Mike Huckabee was a goner after last Saturday’s primary in South Carolina I have news for you: He’s still alive and kicking. Just in the past six days, his campaign has raised almost $900,000. Now, compared to some of the other candidates, thats not a lot but for Huckabee, who has run a very low budget campaign, a million dollars can go a long way.
Now the question for you is this: Will you now help him reach his goal of $1 million dollars by midnight tonight? If the answer is yes, go here and contribute some money to his campaign. If the answer is no, you can still go here and contribute to his campaign. See? It’s a win-win situation.
Last night, Bill Clinton gave a surprise visit to the University of South Carolina to do a little Q&A about his wife’s campaign. This event was publicized before hand because of the venue that was chosen would have been way to small and I’m sure security would have been even more crazy than it was. Since I arrived late (I had just happened to be walking by and went to find out what all the commotion was about) I don’t know exactly when he started this engagement but I think it was around 10:30pm EST.
When I arrived around 11:00pm, there was already a pretty sizable crowd in the room and it seemed that everyone there was texting someone they knew to come see him. One of the first things I noticed was that he was wearing a blue tie with a red plaid shirt that reminded me of those table clothes you put out on fourth of July. Another thing I noticed was all the secret service present. There had to have been at least seven agents inside the coffee shop. After the room got filled up with people, one of the agents actually manned the doors and would only let a certain number of people in who had just left.
The first question I actually heard the answer to was about Roe v. Wade. A girl asked what Hillary would do to ensure that it wasn’t overturned. Bill pointed out that all the democratic candidates have pretty much the same view on this and that they will do everything in their power to ensure that it isn’t overturned. For example, he stated that within the next four years, 1-3 Supreme Court Justices will retire which means that whoever is president will choose their replacements. If there is a democrat president, the Justices will most likely be ones who vote to keep Roe and if there is a republican president, the Justices will most likely be ones to overturn Roe. He then went on to say how Bush has overturned a lot of the policies he established while he was president. He sounded pretty bitter when he said this.
One of the most interesting this about this talk is that I swear he was talking in the terms that we were going to elect him. For example, he said that he would “bring back accountability” to the white house. He didn’t say that Hillary would, he said that “I” would. It was weird because he made this mistake more than once. I really wish I had my camera so I could have had taped this part. I’m pretty positive that I heard this but its just so outrageous that I wish I could have proof.
One of my friends (who I might add is an Obama supporter) was there and got to ask Bill a question concerning the Darfur resolution that Obama has already signed. Bill admitted that he had no knowledge of this resolution and didn’t know why Hillary might not have signed it already. In the words of my friend, after stating this he went on to talk about all “the great things he did in terms of foreign policy when he was president.” The most interesting thing was that as my friend was about to leave, Bill asked her if she could get him a copy of the resolution. She did and as he was leaving, he stopped and talked with her and her friends about genocide and poverty for about ten minutes. To say the least, she was very excited about this.
As he was doing his Q&A, I noticed something very interesting about the crowd. At most of these events, people stay the whole time to listen to what is being said, but here, people were coming and leaving after a while. Now, this may be because people felt guilty about those who had to wait outside until more people left but I have a theory that most of the people there just wanted to see “the man.” Most of those in the crowd didn’t really care about what he had to say all they wanted was a picture proving that they were there and had seen him in person.
Anyways, I must admit that it was pretty cool to see him in person even though I couldn’t dislike him any more. However, one positive thing about this event is that now I can see how he got the nickname “slick willy.”
UPDATE (4:13pm EST)
This is what I just found on my friend’s blog who spoke with Bill about Darfur.
