Presidential money chase

 

Hat Tip: Chris Cillizza: Washington Post’s Fix Blog

Ask Bill Burton, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, how much money the Illinois Democrat will raise for his presidential race in the first three months of this year and he’ll tell you $8 to $10 million.

Peruse an invite for Obama’s fundraising event in New York City tomorrow night, however, and you get an entirely different picture of the Illinois Senator’s financial ceiling. Fourteen individuals or couples are listed as “chairs” meaning, according to the invitation obtained by The Fix, that they have committed to raise $100,000 for Obama. Another 13 individuals and/or couples are listed as “hosts” — a designation that requires raising $50,000. Sixteen are “co-hosts”, which means they are committed to raise $25,000 each for Obama.

Add just those numbers up and Obama’s take from the event tomorrow night is nearly $2.5 million. Of course overhead costs and other expenses mean he won’t net that amount, but he is likely to walk away from the fundraiser with $2 million or more. (It’s worth noting, and The Fix should have done so in our original post,that the “chairs,” “hosts,” and “co-hosts” have a year to raise the money. But still.)

By Burton’s calculation that means Obama — in one night — has collected between 20 and 25 percent of what he will raise for the entire quarter.

Welcome to the expectations game where each of the competing Democratic presidential campaigns seeks to pump up their rival’s fundraising potential while downplaying their own ability to collect cash. All of this behind-the-scenes spinning is aimed at ensuring that when the first quarter fundraising numbers do become public (sometime between March 31 and April 15) it’s your candidate who surprises and your rivals who disappoint.

Obama is not alone in this game. Aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton say their goal is to raise $15 million between Jan. 1 and March 31. Why $15 million? Because that would be double what then Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) collected in the first quarter of 2003. With giving limits doubled, they argue, it stands to reason that $15 million would be a worthy fundraising quarter.

Except that no one — including Clinton’s confidantes — believe that she will raise just $15 million or that if she did it would lead the field. Informed speculation pegs Clinton’s final number at somewhere between $20 and $30 million.

An aide to a rival candidate who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the money chase offered this gem when asked about Clinton’s fundraising potential in the first three months of the year: “It’s kind of like obscenity — you know it when you see it, which to me means 40 to 50 million.”

Of course, that quote typifies the expectations game.

So, what to make of Edwards in all of this? He was the clear winner of the expectations game in 2003, wowing observes by collecting nearly $7.5 million. This time around, as Jeanne Cummings wrote recently in the Politico, Edwards’ campaign has been the least willing to openly discuss its fundraising target or the men and women tasked with reaching it.

Edwards is also the candidate with the most riding on his financial performance in the first quarter. If Edwards can stay within $5 million of Obama or Clinton (or both) it solidifies his presence in the first tier of Democratic challengers. If, on the other hand, Ewards’ finds himself in a distant third in the fundraising chase, it raises the likelihood that the race for the Democratic nomination will be cast as a two-person affair.

Clarence Thomas: White Supremacist in blackface

Hat Tip: Melinda Hennenberger, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas famously opposes affirmative action, and clearly feels slandered by the suggestion he ever benefited from such a thing.

So, if we no longer need such programs, how’s that working out in Thomas’s own office?

Not well, as it turns out: “Mine happen to be all white males,” Thomas said of his current crop of clerks. “I don’t have quotas.”

When Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York, asked about diversity today at a Congressional hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget, it was Justice Anthony Kennedy who answered first: “We’ve made strides,” he said, but there is just tremendous competition for qualified minority law students. “The profession as a whole is very conscious of it, very conscious.”

“Conscious,” Serrano persisted, “but, have we made progress?”

Of the most recent class of 57 clerks, Kennedy answered, only 7 were minority. And the number of women in the group has fallen dramatically, from more than a third to only 17 percent this year.

In a rare interview last week, Thomas told a writer for Business Week that the notion he was recruited to attend the College of Holy Cross because he is black was “a lie. I don’t mean a mistake. It’s a lie.”

After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Holy Cross did begin recruiting young black men. But that had nothing to do with his entrance the next year, Thomas said: “A nun suggested Holy Cross. That’s how I wound up there. Your industry has suggested that we were all recruited.”

“That was the creation of the politicians, the people with a lot of mouth and nothing to say, and your industry. Everything becomes affirmative action.”

There are no words that adequately express my contempt for Clarence Thomas and the inimical self-loathing ideology he espouses.  I ain’t got the “Love of the Lord” for him and it is something that I must pray over.  I’m gonna leave it at that before I say somethin’ truly hateful.

The Whore turns another trick

Hat Tip: Shenanigans blog at Politico.com

Shenanigans has learned that former heartthrob Tennessee Rep/Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council Harold Ford, Jr. has inked a deal with Fox News Channel as a political contributor.  Lest we forget, they just signed former Pennsylvania Rep Rick Santorum last week – look out Mort and Fred — we see their own TV show in the making. Still, Santorum last week, Ford this week: it’s all about being fair and balanced.

Nobody bet’ not EVER say another mumblin’ word to me again about Harold Ford, Jr not being a corporate whore.   Y’all hear me?   The evidence is overwhelming:  Chair Democratic Leadership Council,  VP at Merrill Lynch, and the coup de grace: a perch on Fox News.   Barack Obama is a true disappointment but his craven machinations pale in comparison to Harold Whore, Jr.   Harold, like Elvis before him, is the King.   
 

Thanx dbl Helix for the heads up.

Obama disses his Pastor

 

Hat Tip: NY TIMES

CHICAGO, March 5 — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama’s presidential announcement.

After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.

But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.

“Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. “One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,” Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers.

Some black leaders are questioning Mr. Obama’s decision to distance his campaign from Mr. Wright because of the campaign’s apparent fear of criticism over Mr. Wright’s teachings, which some say are overly Afrocentric to the point of excluding whites.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the campaign disinvited Mr. Wright because it did not want the church to face negative attention. Mr. Wright did however, attend the announcement and prayed with Mr. Obama beforehand.

“Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church, but because of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself,” Mr. Burton said.

Instead, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Wright’s successor as pastor at Trinity, the Rev. Otis Moss III, to speak. Mr. Moss declined.

In recent weeks, word of Mr. Obama’s treatment of Mr. Wright has reached black leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and given them pause.

“I have not discussed this with Senator Obama in detail, but I can see why callers of mine and other clergymen would be concerned, because the issue is standing by your own pastor,” Mr. Sharpton said.

Mr. Wright’s church, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, is considered mainstream — Oprah Winfrey has attended services, and many members are prominent black professionals. But the church is also more Afrocentric and politically active than standard black congregations.

Mr. Wright helped organize the 1995 Million Man March on Washington and along with other United Church of Christ ministers was one of the first black religious leaders to protest apartheid and welcome gay and lesbian worshippers.

Since Mr. Obama made his presidential ambitions clear, conservatives have drawn attention to his close relationship to Mr. Wright and to the church’s emphasis on black empowerment. Tucker Carlson of MSNBC called the precepts “racially exclusive” and “wrong.” Last week, on the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes,” Erik Rush, a conservative columnist, called the church “quite cultish, quite separatist.”

My Skeptical eye ran across this article last night and was reminded again of it today.  He won’t stand up for his Pastor but some of Y’all think he’ll stand up for us when its required.   Let go of your delusions about Barack Obama and see him for the craven political operator that he is. 

Libby convicted, pardon watch begins

Now that Scooter Libby has been convicted and the Administration’s CYA Pardon watch has begun, do you think that Democrats on the Hill can get a backbone and start considering impeachment?  Yes, I said it.  IMPEACHMENT.   Just because Fitzgerald doesn’t have the stomach to indict Bush and Cheney doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a steep political price to pay for this reversal.   Finally, the Lord has allowed this Administration to suffer a serious political blow for lying to the American people about their nefarious motivations for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.   Finally, justice has been served.  Finally, the so-called Democrats have a reason to investigate and dig deeper until they strike political gold and force some of the greatest liars in American history from their bunkers of power.  If impeachment remains off the table after the conviction of Scooter Libby, I will have to seriously question my party affilliation.  

Hillary initiates assimilation campaign for women

HAT TIP: NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, March 5 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will begin an ambitious effort on Tuesday to enlist thousands of women to play roles in her presidential campaign, hoping to build on the enthusiasm her candidacy has stirred among female voters at early campaign events.

Mrs. Clinton will announce the drive, which will unfold through March to coincide with Women’s History Month, in a speech at the annual luncheon held by Emily’s List, a political group favoring Democratic female candidates who support abortion rights that has already endorsed her.

The campaign intends to use social networking tools and other Web technology to develop a thousands-strong Women’s Leadership Network, which would promote Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy nationwide and, by this fall, hold campaign events and take part in fund-raising.

“When a woman has an important question, like who’s a good doctor, they’re more likely to talk to another woman,” said Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton. “If we can get a discussion going among women about the campaign, and Hillary as a candidate, it would be hugely important.”

Clinton advisers are also devising campaign roles for prominent female supporters who made breakthroughs in their own fields, including the tennis champion Billie Jean King; Geraldine Ferraro, the vice-presidential nominee in 1984; and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Barack in Boston

By Megan Tench, Boston Globe Staff

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a quiet trip to Boston today for a closed-door benefit, posing for photographs with a fund-raiser with ties to the Clinton family the day after he crossed paths with his Democratic rival in Selma, Ala.

 Obama met with about 120 potential donors at the University of Massachusetts Club, many of whom worked on the campaigns of John F. Kerry in 2004 and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick last year, according to those who attended the event, which was closed to the press.

The crowd included Alan D. Solomont, a Weston entrepreneur and philanthropist who raised eyebrows when he announced his support for the presidential campaign of the senator from Illinois. Solomont was a top fund-raiser for Kerry and has first worked with the Clinton family during the former president’s first national campaign in 1992.

On Sunday, Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York crossed campaign paths when they both paid tribute to a march by civil rights activists who were beaten by police in Selma in 1965.

Thugs in NYPD Blue testify in Sean Bell case

NEW YORK (AP) — Two of five police officers involved in the 50-shot fusillade that killed an unarmed man on his wedding day appeared before a grand jury Monday.

The shooting that killed Sean Bell and wounded two of his friends prompted community outrage and questions about police tactics. The survivors claim the officers never identified themselves as police before they opened fire.

The first officer to appear, Detective Paul Headley, left the closed-door session feeling ”relieved that he had the opportunity to tell his version of events,” said his attorney, John Arlia. ”Clearly, it has been a toll on him and his family.”

Headley, 35, did not speak to reporters after testifying for more than two hours.

Officer Michael Carey, 26, arrived a short time later accompanied by Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

”He will go in there and tell his story as a police officer and put some facts to some of the fiction that ran on the streets,” Lynch said.

The grand jury called the officers in the order of the number of shots they fired. Headley fired one round and Carey fired three. They were to be followed by Marc Cooper, who shot four times, Gescard Isnora, who fired 11 shots, and Michael Oliver, who shot 31 times.

Last week, the grand jury heard from the two survivors, Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23.

Bell, 23, was killed before dawn after his bachelor party at a topless bar where police had launched an undercover operation in response to complaints about prostitution. He was to be married later that day.

Gordon resigns as President of NAACP

NEW YORK (AP) — NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon is quitting the civil rights organization, leaving after just 19 months at the helm, he told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Gordon cited growing strain with board members over the group’s management style and future operations.

“I believe that any organization that’s going to be effective will only be effective if the board and the CEO are aligned and I don’t think we are aligned,” Gordon said. “This compromises the ability of the board to be as effective as it can be.”

Gordon said he will give up his duties before month’s end. He spoke by phone from Los Angeles, where he attended the NAACP Image Awards.

Dennis C. Hayes, general counsel of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is expected to serve as interim president, Gordon said. Hayes filled the same role after Kweisi Mfume resigned the presidency in 2004 after nine years.

Gordon said that while the NAACP is an advocacy organization, it needs to be more focused on service and finding solutions.

“I’m used to a CEO running an organization, with the board approving strategy and policy,” Gordon said. “But the NAACP board is very much involved.”

Gordon said he made the decision in recent weeks and told the board at its annual meeting in New York City in mid-February.

NAACP leaders were surprised by his decision and engaged in hours of discussion, he said.

“They expressed disappointment,” Gordon said. “We attempted to see whether there was a way to continue but that didn’t happen.”

Gordon sounded weary as he boarded a flight home to New York City on Sunday.

“I don’t view this as I’m right and they’re wrong. I view this as I see things one way and they see things a different way,” he said. “That misalignment between the CEO and the board is unhealthy.”

Asked about his plans after leaving the NAACP, Gordon said: “I’m going to catch my breath.”

“What I’ve clearly learned in my tenure here is that all is not well in black America, that’s for sure,” he said. “I believe I have a lot to offer. I’ve got to find a way to be engaged that optimizes what it is I bring to the table. My intention is not to disengage, but to find a different way.”

NAACP spokesman Richard McIntire declined to comment.

Gordon, 61, was a surprise pick for the NAACP’s top post. When he took over on August 1, 2005, he had no track record in traditional civil rights circles. He had spent 35 years in the telecommunications industry and retired in 2003 from his post as president of the Retail Markets Group for Verizon Corp.

Critics said he wouldn’t be a good fit for the nearly 98-year-old organization.

However, he smoothed strained relations between the NAACP and the White House, meeting with President Bush three times in less than a year. He used his corporate ties to lend quick assistance to black New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. And he hired a number of key national employees whose reputations inspired staff members.

Gordon “brought a level of competence that we hadn’t had,” Julian Bond, chairman of the board, said last year.

Bond also has acknowledged that, with 64 members, the NAACP’s board of directors is large and sometimes unwieldy. But he has defended it, saying it allows a wide range of members voices to be heard.

Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor who has followed the NAACP closely for years, was surprised at the news, but added that he had suspected that Gordon may not fit in at the NAACP.

“I thought very early on that there might be a cultural conflict,” Walters said. “Somebody who came out of a corporate culture and was used to a set of agenda items and management style in one field might not have been able to make the adjustment totally to another field.”

Barack’s Buckdance for the Israel Lobby

Brotha Barack’s Safe Negro tour makes an obligatory stop today to pander and buckdance in blackface for the Israel Lobby’s political action arm: AIPAC.   

AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), as Ari Berman has written in the Nation is “the leading player in what is sometimes referred to as “The Israel Lobby”—a coalition that includes major Jewish groups, neoconservative intellectuals and Christian Zionists. With its impressive contacts among Hill staffers, influential grassroots supporters and deep connections to wealthy donors, AIPAC is the lobby’s key emissary to Congress. But in many ways, AIPAC has become greater than just another lobby; its work has made unconditional support for Israel an accepted cost of doing business inside the halls of Congress.  AIPAC’S interest, Israel’s interest and America’s are perceived by most elected leaders to be one and the same.”

Barack Obama doesn’t support the entire AIPAC line but he doesn’t significantly depart from it either.  He intuitively understands the price he must pay to ascend to the Presidency. According to Jewish Week, “The [Obama] Campaign has…signed on a leading Jewish Mideast expert, Dan Shapiro, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration.  Shapiro is leaving his position as a top aide to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla) for a…role doing Mideast policy and Jewish outreach for the Obama campaign.”  

Gotta admire Brotha Barack for getting all his ducks in a row and stealing prominent Jewish fundraisers like David Geffen and George Soros away from Hillary.  He plays political chess masterfully and executes his moves deftly. Anybody who still believes that the brotha wasn’t planning a run for President from the moment he stepped on the national stage in 2004 is a damn fool. This shit didn’t just happen, it was methodically planned like a new Microsoft product launch.  His flacking for Israel and his votes on the Senate floor are as calculated and cynical as every word in the Audacity of Hope.

M. J. Rosenberg has written on TPM Cafe, “A new voice like Obama really has no need to adopt the me-too policies on the Mideast that have been de rigueur for 30 years.  The status quo types are not going to support him anyway but the overwhelming majority of pro-Israel (and that means pro-peace) Jews will.  By that I mean the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community which, according to the AJC poll, is the most anti-Iraq war segment of the population.  They are not neocons, not on Iraq, not Israel.”  I wish I could believe that.  Obama’s actions during the latest Israel/Lebanon conflict contradict that presumption, underscore his compliant “Me-too” attitude, and sour my disposition towards his Presidential bid.  

Israel’s actions last summer toward Lebanon were unnecessary and constituted war crimes in violation of international law.   Israel’s government has been swapping military hostages for decades with the Lebanese and the illegal seizure of two more Israeli hostages became a convenient pretext for war to Israel’s new Prime Minister.  Obama rubberstamped Israeli war crimes when he said, “I don’t think there is any nation that would not have reacted the way Israel did after two soldiers had been snatched.  I support Israel’s response to take some action in protecting themselves.”

As a reasonable person, I do not argue against Israel’s right to exist or that it has a right to defend itself when attacked.  The Lebanese government is not blameless here nor is the Iranian backed paramilitary organization Hezbollah.  What I contend is that Israel defend itself in conformity with international law, something it has categorically refused to do for decades.

Obama voted for a manifestly fraudulent nonbinding Senate resolution that Stephen Zunes has said, “reinterpret(s) the United Nations Charter by claiming that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure is an act of legitimate self-defense under Article 51 despite a broad consensus of international legal scholars to the contrary. In short, both Democrats and Republicans are now on record that, in the name of “fighting terrorism,” U.S. allies—and, by extension, the United States as well—can essentially ignore international law and inflict unlimited damage on the civilian infrastructure of a small and largely defenseless country, even a pro-Western democracy like Lebanon.”

Obama’s fraudulent vote and his endorsement of unilateral war should be all the proof one needs that his perspective is warped and his focus on just and equitable conflict resolution in the Middle East will be lacking as President. When Africa cries out for help, brotha Barack, like Colin and Condi before him, will be too preoccupied with “more important” whitefolks problems to deal. As a freshman Senator and imperialist in training, he learned his lessons well. This is the real reason why our white brothas and sistahs in the beltway establishment can’t curb their enthusiasm for Barack.  

However, if that isn’t enough for you, consider this:  Obama’s address today to AIPAC called for “preserv[ing] our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing to work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs.  This would help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as Close as Gaza.”  Consequently, this is a recipe for generous military subsidies to keep the Israeli Defense Forces armed to the teeth and a continuation of Israel’s unjustified militarism toward its perceived enemies.

This speech does more to call into question Obama’s blackness more than any single address he has given because it is nothing but blackface minstrelsy calculated to appease wealthy and influential actors interested in keeping the status quo in place. The brotha has sold his soul for a chance at Presidential power and he clearly hasn’t sold it to blackfolks.   The speech is standard AIPAC friendly boilerplate that national candidates on the make give at one time or another.  

Lately, there is always some Iran and Ahmedinejad bashing, a commitment to large military subsidies, and a tacit acknowledgement that we will look the other way when they do their dirt to the Palestinians and Lebanese. Moreover, unless he commits to Israeli military supremacy, he’ll never be able to compete with Hillary in the money chase of which the Jewish community always plays an integral part on the Democratic side of the aisle. 

Jewish Voice for Peace, a California based peace group has written, “Massive military aid promotes militarism, which has led to a reliance on military, rather than diplomatic means to work for a solution to this ongoing [Israel vs. Arab] conflict.” Like Iraq, imposing a military solution has solved nothing between Israel and its neighbors and has increased instability in the region.  

Jewish Voice for Peace has also written that, “Furthermore, when our government arms proponents of massive human rights abuses, we become complicit in their crimes and hated by their victims. U.S. support of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and its abuse of human rights undermines any moral authority to criticize human rights abuses in other countries. And it shreds the U.S. of any credibility in acting to promote peace in the region.”   

Last month, a movement was afoot in Oslo, Norway by 40 nations to ban the cluster munitions that proliferate in current conflicts, which continue to kill and maim people long after the battles are over. Human Rights Watch has documented that “Israel used cluster munitions containing some 2.6 to 4 million submunitions in Lebanon, the majority of which were produced in the United States. Israel’s use of cluster munitions was the most extensive anywhere in the world since the 1991 Gulf War.” The United States opposes this effort and there were no calls from either the Obama or Clinton camp for U.S participation because neither will sacrifice their ambition to sit in the Oval Office for peace.

It is a violation of U.S. law to provide military aid to governments, which consistently give short shrift to human rights as defined in international law. Israel is always given a pass no matter what it does or how many civilians it illegally targets and kills. Both Obama and Hillary could have stepped up at anytime to pressure the Administration to cut off military aid to Israel and prevent the atrocities that routinely occur in the Palestinian territories or in Lebanon because of Israel’s over-the-top defensive posture.    

It is all very Orwellian to me. Indeed, “War is Peace” to all of the leading contenders for the imperial power of the Presidency. A showdown is developing in Selma, Alabama this weekend in the continuing battle for the black vote between Hillary and Obama. They both need to be seen paying homage to Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement’s direct action campaign, which culminated in “Bloody Sunday” and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.     

Whatever both candidates say will be more empty rhetoric that quotes Dr. King without adhering to the spirit and substance that he advocated. “The stability of the large world house which is ours will involve a revolution of values to accompany the scientific and freedom revolutions engulfing the earth.  We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing”-oriented society to a “person” –oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” That’s the message Obama needs to embrace instead of embracing more war. He never will because he is lost to us forever.