Update: MSNBC just reported 7,000 dead, though online reports haven't updated the figures yet.
As if the Myanmar cyclone wasn't bad enough, a 7.8 earthquake struck the Sichuan province Monday afternoon at 2:28pm, and early reports say there's between 3,000-5,000 dead from just that one province. I know we're all concerned about the primary battle and all, but there's real tragedy going on elsewhere in the world too.
This tells you how massive the quake was.
The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.
There's reports of as many as 900 students trapped after their school collapsed.
Xinhua reporters in Juyuan township, about 60 miles from the epicenter, saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of their three-story school building "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
Wow, this happened in February, and yet did anybody hear about this? Whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson's home caught fire, and then a few days later, her car was run off the road by a former police officer! This is all in addition to Don Siegelman's home being broken into twice, as was his lawyer's office.
Per The Crypt, the GOP has found a wealthy magnate to take the place of Tim Baldermann.
Illinois Republicans selected concrete magnate Marty Ozinga III to be their nominee for the seat of retiring Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.), replacing New Lenox mayor Tim Baldermann on the 11th District Congressional ballot.
....
Ozinga also announced he has raised over $400,000 since he began fundraising earlier this month, significantly closing the cash-on-hand gap between himself and his Democratic opponent, state Senate President Debbie Halvorson. Halvorson reported $673,000 in her campaign account at the end of March.
What piqued my interest was that though Ozinga's wealthy, he's not exactly a self funder. Why?
Pretty interesting observation from CQ Politics. Four veterans, three of whom fought in Iraq, are all running as Democrats in four different districts in Georgia. (And actually, First Coast News shows there are five, not four.)
So we're going over the elitist argument again, are we? Now, others have made some excellent points on the current situation with Obama and using the word "bitter".
Well, Bill Maher had what may be the definitive speech on the "elitist" argument almost exactly one year ago, on his April 13, 2007, show.
In Devilstower's story about John McCain not having signed on to Jim Webb's G.I. Bill, it's mentioned that there are 51 co-sponsors. (Actually, there are now 52.) At first, I thought it must have been the 49 Democrats and two Independents, but then I saw that John Warner (R-VA) had also signed on. In fact, ten Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors. Which makes it all the more inexcusable for ANY Democrat NOT to have signed on yet.
I was a bit shocked to see which Democrats have NOT signed on yet. I name names after the fold.
Update: Sen. Feingold's office's response at the end.
They're at it again. Over at ICECAP, a site that claims to not be made up of global warming deniers, but turns out to host some of the biggest names in the global warming denial field that get serious $$$ from the oil companies, Joseph D'Aleo (a meteorologist, not climate scientist) put up their latest lie. This graph is the brunt of their argument.
See?? There's no correlation between temperatures and CO2 output!
silver spring recently did an excellent analysis of the SurveyUSA numbers that show Obama has greater coattails than Hillary. This coattail effect was shown last week when Democrats took control of Dennis Hastert's former seat in Illinois. Regardless of who's president, unless the Democrats get a supermajority, expect to see the remaining Senate Republicans filibuster all good progressive legislation, especially under a Democratic president. So the issue of coattails becomes important.
I want to extend what silver spring did by looking at Rasmussen's state numbers. Now, I trust SurveyUSA the most, as they've consistently shown themselves to get very accurate results. In 2004, they did the best job of any polling firm, and their track record's holding this year too. The second best pollster from 2004 is Rasmussen Reports. Let's look at their state numbers. The full numbers after the fold....
So with eight months to go, I figure it’s time for an updated look at all the 2008 Senate races. There are 35 seats up for election because of a scenario in Wyoming and Mississippi where both seats are up, due to the passing of Craig Thomas and the resignation of Trent Lott, respectively. Now obviously, quite a few of the races are considered "safe" for the incumbent. So I’ll rank these in terms of tiers. The top tier will be the races where there is a serious challenger to the incumbent (or at least the incumbent’s party, in cases of retirement), where the party holding the seat has a real shot of switching. The second tier are races that could become top tier races, but are not at this point. Tier III are ones where a major event would need to happen for the seat to come into play. And the safe seats? Well, Mike Gravel has a better shot at winning the presidency than those incumbents have of losing their races.
Follow me below the fold for all the races. Note: Some of this may seem repetitive, with information you already know. That’s because I originally wrote this for the Bruin Democrats, many of whom don’t follow the national races like we do. Consider this a primer for both newcomers and political junkies alike.
Pro-lifers hate Planned Parenthood. We know that. But now they've taken their attacks to a whole new level, with viral videos and such. Now, there's an ongoing campaign in 2008 to discredit PP as being associated with racists. This latest onslaught highlights PP founder Margaret Sanger of being in favor of eugenics, which was true, but then tries to equate her views with that of the present-day Planned Parenthood. Logical fallacy, anyone? And then there's been "undercover" work done to try and prove that Planned Parenthood in its present state is still secretly racist against black people.
This is their latest attack video they've released.
More deceptions and untruths from their articles and videos below the fold.
Here at UCLA, we’ve held a Dance Marathon every year since 2002 to benefit the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. This is the essence of a grassroots organization, started by about 20 UCLA students back in 2002.
This is a good introductory video to what our Dance Marathon is all about. It was made for last year’s marathon, so yes, we were playing "Don’t Stop Believin’" before The Sopranos made the song famous again.
Well, after this latest verbal diarrhea from Bill O'Reilly, with which Keith Olbermann and IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff blasted him for his assholery, what's O'Reilly to do?
Why, ramp up the attacks on homeless vets and John Edwards, that's what! The sordid details after the fold.
This diary originally began as a comment in RenaRF's diary on believing in Obama. It got me thinking about why I'm supporting Edwards over Obama right now, when I had been leaning Obama in the beginning of 2007. (Actually, when Edwards declared his candidacy down in New Orleans, I thought, "oh crap, he's gonna split the anti-Hillary vote" with Obama.)
I'm going to try to flesh out some thoughts of my concerns about Obama. This isn't to say Edwards is perfect. My concerns that Obama's presidency will leave us disappointed may be applied to an Edwards presidency too. But like aigenta said and BenGoshi echoed yesterday, if we are to lose a battle, I want to make sure we go down fighting.
(For those not familiar with my diaries or comments by now, I am a very strong Edwards supporter. But the stats I present here are what they are.)
So, the most recent figures I could find on money spent in Iowa on TV ads are these from MSNBC.
Obama (more than $9.5 million) has spent the most among all the candidates -- followed by Clinton (more than $7.5 million), Romney ($7 million-plus), Edwards ($4 million), and Huckabee ($1.4 million).
Here, Obama outspent Edwards by at least a 2.4:1 margin, and Hillary outspent him by at least 1.9:1 margin. Combined, he was outspent by the other two by at least a 4.25:1 margin.
Who got the most bang for the buck below the fold....
All right, let's look at what the latest polls are saying about the state of the race. I've compiled all the latest polls here for everyone to compare and contrast. When possible, I've listed the numbers from the previous poll each polling firm conducted too, to see the trend.
Remember Susan Klopfer? As a Clinton precinct captain, her story made headlines when she decided to switch her support to Obama. The Obama campaign even featured her in this incredibly popular YouTube video.
So, my generally apolitical mom sent me an e-mail this morning that she had gotten from her friends about the recent action by the Asian American group 80-20 calling upon their members to "defeat Obama". Seems that they're upset he didn't respond to their questionnaire.
In response to Sen. Obama's steadfast refusal to address the grievance faced by Asian Ams, and given that the presidential primary season will begin in 7 days, the Board of 80-20 has voted unanimously to defeat Sen. Obama's candidacy in the Democratic primary unless he replies to OUR questionnaire with all yeses. This resolution has been formally transmitted to Sen. Obama.
More after the fold, where it gets more bizarre....
So one refrain I've seen bandied about in the last couple months has been that Edwards is a weak candidate because he couldn't even win his home state of North Carolina in 2004. Now, the primary rebuttal is that it was John Kerry's campaign, not Edwards'. But in looking at the numbers, I discovered something quite interesting.
Did you know that Bush got a higher percentage of the vote in 2004, when compared to 2000, in EVERY southern state... EXCEPT for North Carolina? In fact, Bush improved his percentage of the vote in 47 of our 50 states, and even in D.C. Yes, even in states that Bush lost by wide margins, he improved on his vote percentage in those states. He barely got 35% of the vote in New York in 2000, but got over 40% of the vote there in 2004. Think about that. Hell, Bush even improved in Massachusetts, John Kerry's home state. Think about that.
