The Zambian Chronicle is extremely excited that we have received an invitation for one of our staff to attend the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America.
“The Presidential Inaugural Committee requests the honor of your presence to attend and participate in the Inauguration of Barack H Obama as the President of the United States of America and Joseph R Biden, Jr. as Vice President of the United States of America on Tuesday, the twentieth of January two thousand and nine in the City of Washington”
The invitation reads …
This is history in making for us and we are excited for the invite but what is more significant is that Barack H Obama is a first generation American born of an African father from Kenya.
In other words, he is the first real African blood to take over the helm of the world’s most powerful nation. He has surrounded himself with the best of the best and this will be a testimony to the rest of Africa that we too can lead well.
We know fully well how Black America would like to claim and hold on to Barack Obama, for surety they can but the rightful claim comes from Africa. Black America can take Michelle Obama, Barack H Obama is ours to claim, thanks a trillion.
Africa from here on has no excuse whatsoever at all. Barack H Obama, part African and part American takes over as one of the youngest Presidents in American history at inauguration. In fact only John F Kennedy beats that record in recent history.
Then, all of a sudden, I got an email from Belliah after Super Tuesday. Mr. Brains, I think we missed the boat here. I am switching camp, I think Obama is the best candidate in this race, Belliah wrote.
Simon is solidly behind John McCain, she continued. And Lisa is not sure who she would like to back, she believes the whole world is going to hell and America is right there with it in a hand basket, I retorted.
We have a totally disjointed crew, with at least each candidate being supported by one of us, I said. Simon is usually behind the scenes. He is Zamchro’s Chief Legal Counsel (CLC); a board certified attorney and a very cool guy, he is. Tony was not a member of our team yet and so was not privy to the saga.
Then Simon followed in and wrote an article why he thought Obama would be the best President of the United States of America – this was a real twist especially that he had always been a republican supporter.
The tectonic shift continued with the following week Belliah saying, she wanted to recluse herself from being Managing Editor. She said that she wanted to be as free as possible and thought that she was head over hills over the momentum and thus her editing functions would be biased.
I mentioned that once we made the editorial decision to back Hillary we would not retract it. I accepted her decision and informed her that at the end of it all we would eventually support the final winner and continue to report as objectively as we had always done in the past – a multi-media enterprise, we are.
I appreciated Belliah’s honesty and that helped keep us stay focused on what our major objective was, to report news and facts as we saw them unfold besides we had made one booboo before and it was not time for another.
What was fascinating about the whole process was how, in divergence of views people can still coalesce around a common cause. It was a great learning experience especially that we first-handedly realized how easily all of us could become political junkies and love it …
Someone was watching, loyalty and objectivity finally paid off thus the invitation.In it is written the following, “…The Presidential Inaugural Committee requests the honor of your presence to attend and participate in the Inauguration”. The honest truth is that we are the ones honored to be invited at the time history is in the making.
Barack H Obama achieved what many have attempted and failed, we have said it before here and we will recount a thousand times. He made it look like getting the US Presidency was the easiest thing one could do in his life.
We wish the new President of the greatest nation on the face of the earth, God Speed. We wish him well; him and his family. And for the rest of us on the African continent, its Showtime …
Africa is in charge by proxy and can’t afford to lag behind. We urge all African Presidents on the continent to emulate Barack H Obama and make us all proud.
Zambian Chronicle and its team wish to congratulate President-Elect Barack H Obama for becoming the 44th President of the United States of America.
Long Live Africa, Long Live Zambia and God bless us all. Live Long & Prosper; that’s this week’s memo from us at the Zambian Chronicle … thanks a trillion.
John McCain’s campaign is sticking with its argument that Barack Obama is an aloof celebrity, as aides privately acknowledge that previous efforts to label Obama as a flip-flopper have been nowhere near as effective.
The campaign’s ad this week comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, though attracting criticism from Democrats, got heavy play on the Internet and in print and TV media.
The campaign reportedly is spending $140,000 a day to run the ad in battleground states, and aides are echoing its content in daily talking points.
“We’re running against a celebrity. He is someone who gathered throngs of fans overseas,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds told FOX News Saturday.
And after Obama’s campaign announced Saturday it would accept three presidential debates with McCain — and not the kind of town hall meetings McCain had wanted — McCain spokesman Brian Rogers again invoked the comparison.
“We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude to appear at town hall meetings … but we hope he’ll reconsider,” he said in a statement.
McCain has struggled to stick with one label for Obama, casting him as a pessimist, a liberal and more recently a flip-flopper.
But aides say the flip-flopper charge has not stuck in the minds of voters, and that the campaign will instead continue to define Obama as an inexperienced celeb.
The campaign even tried to mockingly compare him to Moses in an ad released Friday.
McCain told reporters at the time his campaign is just “having some fun” and showing a “sense of humor.”
But that might not be all he has in mind. After Obama spoke to more than 200,000 spectators at his rally last month in Berlin and held high-level meetings recently with members of the Bush administration and foreign leaders, the McCain campaign is driving home the message that Obama is being too presumptuous.
It’s unclear what impact the gambit will have on the polls in the long term, but the Gallup daily tracking poll Saturday showed Obama and McCain tied at 44 percent for the second day in a row. That’s after Obama had opened up a 9-percentage-point lead a week ago.
The McCain campaign even balked at an opportunity to bring back the flip-flopper charge Saturday, after Obama told a Florida newspaper he would support a compromise plan in Congress to allow some offshore oil drilling, which he’s long opposed.
“This wasn’t really a new position,” Obama told reporters.
And the McCain campaign agreed.
They circulated Obama’s claim and sent out their own statement saying: “We hope Barack Obama will realize that his ongoing opposition to John McCain’s realistic energy solutions and additional off shore drilling is wrong.”
Granted, McCain was the first to reverse course and support offshore oil drilling. But his campaign also seemed to drop a charge that Obama was playing the race card. That charge was leveled earlier in the week after Obama told a group of Missouri voters that Republicans would try to make voters afraid of him because he doesn’t look like past presidents.
McCain said Friday he did not bring up the issue, that Obama did, and now he wants to “move on.”
Obama said Saturday he doesn’t think McCain is racist, only cynical. And he ridiculed McCain for the celebrity ads.
“You’ve got statistics that say we’ve lost another 50,000 jobs, that Florida is in a recession for the first time in a decade and a half and what was being talked about was Paris and Britney,” Obama said.
“They’re clever on creating distractions from the issues that really matter in people’s lives,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure we keep focused on people’s day-to-day concerns. We don’t take the skill of the Republicans in engaging in negative campaigning lightly.”
FOX News’ Mosheh Oinounou and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President George W. Bush and his top policymakers misstated Saddam Hussein‘s links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq’s arms programs as they made a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on Thursday.
The report shows an administration that “led the nation to war on false premises,” said the committee’s Democratic Chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia. Several Republicans on the committee protested its findings as a “partisan exercise.”
The committee studied major speeches by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in advance of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and compared key assertions with intelligence available at the time.
Statements that Iraq had a partnership with al Qaeda were wrong and unsupported by intelligence, the report said.
It said that Bush’s and Cheney’s assertions that Saddam was prepared to arm terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction for attacks on the United States contradicted available intelligence.
Such assertions had a strong resonance with a U.S. public, still reeling after al Qaeda‘s September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Polls showed that many Americans believed Iraq played a role in the attacks, even long after Bush acknowledged in September 2003 that there was no evidence Saddam was involved.
The report also said administration prewar statements on Iraq’s weapons programs were backed up in most cases by available U.S. intelligence, but officials failed to reflect internal debate over those findings, which proved wrong.
PUBLIC CAMPAIGN
The long-delayed Senate study supported previous reports and findings that the administration’s main cases for war — that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was spreading them to terrorists — were inaccurate and deeply flawed.
“The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11) attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,” Rockefeller said in written commentary on the report.
“Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises.”
A statement to Congress by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the Iraqi government hid weapons of mass destruction in facilities underground was not backed up by intelligence information, the report said. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said Rumsfeld’s comments should be investigated further, but he stopped short of urging a criminal probe.
The committee voted 10-5 to approve the report, with two Republican lawmakers supporting it. Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri and three other Republican panel members denounced the study in an attached dissent.
“The committee finds itself once again consumed with political gamesmanship,” the Republicans said. The effort to produce the report “has indeed resulted in a partisan exercise.” They said, however, that the report demonstrated that Bush administration statements were backed by intelligence and “it was the intelligence that was faulty.”
White House spokeswomanDana Perino said: “We had the intelligence that we had, fully vetted, but it was wrong. We certainly regret that and we’ve taken measures to fix it.”
PUBLIC SUPPORT
U.S. public opinion on the war, supportive at first, has soured, contributing to a dive in Bush’s popularity.
The conflict is likely to be a key issue in the November presidential election between Republican John McCain, who supports the war, and Democrat Barack Obama, who opposed the war from the start and says he would aim to pull U.S. troops out within 16 months of taking office in January 2009.
Rockefeller has announced his support for Obama.
The administration’s record in making its case for Iraq has also been cited by critics of Bush’s get-tough policy on Iran. They accuse Bush of overstating the potential threat of Iran’s nuclear program in order to justify the possible use of force.
A second report by the committee faulted the administration’s handling of December 2001 Rome meetings between defense officials and Iranian informants, which dealt with the Iran issue. It said department officials failed to share intelligence from the meeting, which Rockefeller said demonstrated a “fundamental disdain” for other intelligence agencies.
(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Donna Smith)
At the time I was beginning to give Western politics a credit and thought African politics were disgusting, I mispoke. The truth is; politics sucks in general. What is happening within the democratic party is worse than polio. I thought Zimbabwean under Mugabe s politics sucked, No No No, Power is so sweet regardless the country.
First of all, you get the insider of the republicans writing the stink about Mr G Bush.
Scott McClellan, who served as the White House Press Secretary from 2003-2006, has written a book which essentially throws his former employer under the bus.
I can say, Mr Bush is a real good comedian. He makes me laugh. He Can do well as the headmaster or comedian. I think politics is not his career.
Below is a picture of him chest bumping an Air Force Academy grad.
Here’s another one of him giving his best “I just scored a touchdown instead of brokering world peace” pose.
On the other hand, the three candidates are going through the tough screening, Republican candidate John McCain is having fun talking about how he is going to win Iraq war when nominated as president ” I will never surrender in Iraq” Brags McCain. Mr Bush is secretly helping John McCain to raise funds for his campaign. Big stink.
“Bush, still struggling with record-low approval ratings, held the first of three private fundraising events aimed at helping McCain’s cash-starved campaign keep pace with Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama. ”
Democratic candidates are still cat fighting over the nomination. God knows how many fire fighters will be needed to stop the fight.
The screening goes on……
The screening includes what type of socks one wears in the morning. what you eat for lunch, who hang out with a candidate for dinner. How many concubines the candidate had through out his /her life, how many wives/husbands …. Disclosure of your personal finances, religion , including the kind of tooth brush one uses. etc etc. I wish African leaders could go through the same screening.
Below is the story of what happened with the share of delegates. I do not like this picture at all, it is so scary to see the two candidates together. No peace in their faces. This is not good at all. I am scared.
Debate that stretched almost all of Saturday, the Rules and Bylaws Committee finally came to an agreement, can be well narrated below:
Continue reading ‘Michigan & Flo
WASHINGTON – “Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat Michigan and Florida delegates with half-votes, ruling on a long-running dispute that has threatened the party’s chances in November and maintaining Barack Obama‘s front-runner status as he moves closer to the nomination.
The decision was a blow to Hillary Rodham Clinton as she was on the verge of watching Obama make history as the first black Democratic presidential nominee. It prompted an irate reaction from boisterous Clinton supporters in the audience and her chief delegate counter, Harold Ickes.
Ickes angrily informed the party’s Rules Committee that Clinton had instructed him to reserve her right to appeal the matter to the Democrats’ credentials committee, which could potentially drag the matter to the party’s convention in August.
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity — let’s all come together, and put our arms around each other,” said Ickes, who is also a member of the Rules Committee that approved the deal. “I submit to you ladies and gentlemen, hijacking four delegates … is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.”
The resolution increased the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination to 2,118, leaving Obama 66 delegates short but still within striking distance after the three final primaries are held in the next three days.
The deal was reached after committee members met privately for more than three hours, trying to hammer out a deal, and announced in a raucous hearing that reflected deep divisions within the party.
“How can you call yourselves Democrats if you don’t count the vote?” one man in the audience shouted before being escorted out by security. “This is not the Democratic Party!”
The sticking point was Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot.
Clinton’s camp insisted Obama shouldn’t get any pledged delegates in Michigan since he chose not to put his name on the ballot, and she should get 73 pledged delegates with 55 uncommitted. Obama’s team insisted the only fair solution was to split the pledged delegates in half between the two campaigns, with 64 each.
The committee agreed on a compromise offered by the Michigan Democratic Party that would split the difference, allowing Clinton to take 69 delegates and Obama 59. Each delegate would get half a vote at the convention in Denver this summer, according to the deal.
The deal passed 19-8. Thirteen members of the committee supported Clinton, so she wasn’t even able to keep her supporters together.
The committee also unanimously agreed to seat the Florida delegation based on the outcome of the January primary, with 105 pledged delegates for Clinton and 67 for Obama, but with each delegate getting half a vote as a penalty.
Proponents of full seating continuously interrupted the committee members as they explained their support of the compromise, then supporters of the deal shouted back.
“Shut up!” one woman shouted at another.
“You shut up!” the second woman shouted back.
Jim Roosevelt, co-chair of the committee, tried repeatedly to gavel it to order. “You are dishonoring your candidate when you disrupt the speakers,” he scolded.
Obama picked up a total of 32 delegates in Michigan, including superdelegates who have already committed, and 36 in Florida. Clinton picked up 38 in Michigan, including superdelegates, and 56.5 in Florida.
Obama’s total increased to 2,052, and Clinton had 1,877.5.
A proposal favored by Clinton that would have fully seated the Florida delegation fully in accordance with the January primary went down with 12 votes in support and 15 against.
Tina Flournoy, who led Clinton’s efforts to seat both states’ delegations with full voting power, said she was disappointed by the outcome but knew the Clinton position had “no chance” of passing the committee.
“I understand the rules. … I can tell you one thing that has driven these rules was being a party of inclusion,” Flournoy said. “I wish my colleagues will vote differently.”
Alice Huffman, a Clinton supporter on the committee, explained that the compromise giving delegates half votes was the next best thing to full seating.
“We will leave here more united than we came,” she said.
Some audience members heckled her in response. “Lipstick on a pig!” one shouted.
“We just blew the election!” a woman in the audience shouted. The crowd was divided between cheering Obama supporters and booing Clinton supporters.
“This isn’t unity! Count all the votes!” another audience member yelled.”
On February 4th, the day before Super Tuesday, Dave Matthews sent out a brief but passionate email to 1 million of his fans endorsing Barack Obama for president. Born in South Africa under apartheid, Matthews witnessed first-hand how racial politics can devastate an entire nation — and how a single, eloquent leader can transcend decades of brutal divisiveness. We caught up with Matthews the day after Obama gave his landmark speech on the role of race in American politics.
You’ve supported candidates before, but you seem especially passionate about Obama. What is it about him that has inspired you?
It’s a quality he has that seems to elevate the people around him. The biggest argument that people can lay against him is his lack of qualifications, which is such an empty argument. The most important qualification a candidate can possess is being able to inspire people to want to do things for the country. The great presidential speeches by people like Kennedy or Lincoln — what made them great were their words, and the fact that they moved mountains with their words. We don’t remember JFK’s qualifications. We don’t remember his connections or his experience in the political arena. What we remember are the qualities that made him stand apart from all that. That’s why people are being inspired by Obama. He makes me feel like it is possible to change the world.
That’s quite the opposite from what I feel about the rest of the candidates. I feel like they’re saying [adopts a deep, pompous voice], “It’s the real world, it is what it is, you need to have experience in order to be able to move forward.” What a bunch of crap. I don’t want someone who’s experienced in the present-day arena of politics — it’s hopelessly failed this country. Both sides of the aisle, without question, have dismally let the American people down. We need a person with fresh ideas and an incredible eloquence that really cuts to the core of so many issues with just a real frankness.
But what about the people who say that Obama is just empty rhetoric?
The argument that’s laid against him so often is, “Come on, be realistic buddy, your head’s in the clouds.” This idea of, “Oh, you’re inspiring people — nice job, but to be president you need to be more qualified to bore people to death and get nothing done. Oh, you want to change the world? The best way to change the world is to know how flop around with the other dead fish.” I mix metaphors because I’m semi-retarded. But I really think Obama could move mountains, not because he’s some kind of spectacular superhuman, but because he moves people in a real way.
Of course, it can also be quite unnerving when someone speaks in such powerful ways about possibilities. I can see how some people are like, “Wait a second, this guy, he’s using crazy talk like ‘hope’ and ‘inspiration’ and ‘change,’ and using them in ways that makes them sound like real things!” The status quo has its attractions, even if it’s a bit uncomfortable. This bed of nails that I sleep on is not very comfortable, but at least it’s a bed.
What did you think of the big speech Obama gave yesterday on race? I was almost moved to tears listening to him take something that could have derailed anyone and turn it into such an opportunity to talk about real issues that face America, things that are have been here forever — forever as far as the length our little history. He put it so beautifully. And he wrote the speech himself. Now there’s a novel idea. Why does he sound so honest when he speaks? Maybe because he writes what he says, because what he’s saying are his own words.
You were born in South Africa when the country was still under apartheid. How does that affect the way you see Obama and this moment in American history?
Race has been an issue forced upon me by my environment. Growing up as a white South African, I learned the absurdity of racism and the ugliness of bigotry. I get this sense of possibility with Obama that reminds me of when I was younger, when Nelson Mandela was finally out of prison. There was all this fear and confusion and worry and horror surrounding the future of South Africa, but the potential for a bloodbath was dissipated by the truly honest ideas laid down by Mandela. The clarity with which he addressed the future made everybody pause, and that was one of the reasons that the transition from apartheid was relatively peaceful. Great leaders have the ability to do that.
You spent much of 2004 working to get George Bush out of the White House. What did that experience teach you about politics?
Back then, the motivation was getting rid of Bush, of being against everything that he stood for. This time, I’m truly for something. Electing Obama will so radically change how the world views us, in a positive way. The rest of the world was stunned when the Bush administration was re-elected. The emperor has no clothes, but damn if thirty-odd percent of us still believe that he’s not naked. It’s evidence of what an incredible machine they have created of fear.
I don’t like to call myself a Democrat or Republican, because to say I’m on one side over the other is like choosing a preference between broken toilets. Real change has been a comedy in American politics for the last three decades. When I look at Obama, I feel like, “Wow, here’s this man who’s going to try to break down some walls and try and revive the Constitution after the three-decade-long beating it has taken. Maybe we can finally resuscitate that poor old dusty piece of paper that?s been kicked into the corner for a long time.”
Do you worry, based on your experience in 2004, about the kind of backlash musicians get when they support a candidate — people saying, “What do you know about politics, why should I care what a musician thinks?” Musicians, although maybe some don?t believe it, are also citizens. We all have the right to say what we think and use whatever power we have to say it, just like politicians use whatever power they have, whatever millions of dollars they have, to make themselves heard. Just because they chose a life of — they would say “civil service,” I might say “egomaniacal attempts to run the world” — doesn’t make them more qualified than anybody else.
When you speak about Obama, it’s almost like you’re talking about a fellow musician — the power and eloquence of his words, the effect that they have to move people.
Yeah, I suppose so. I certainly think there’s a musical quality to how Obama speaks. Kennedy had that power, Bishop Tutu had that power — that ability to make people go, “Oh,” and want to listen. That alone, to me, makes him the most qualified. There’s lots of us who can plow snow, and there’s lots of us who can deliver boxes and push pencils around, but it’s a rare jewel that can move us to be our very best. That’s why I think it?s colossally important for us to have to have him as the next president.
So this isn’t just a case of your wanting to see someone with African heritage in the White House, since as an immigrant you’re ineligible to run for president?
[Laughs] No, no. If I actually wanted to run for president, I’d be rooting for a constitutional amendment to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger to run. The only thing that really is up against me, besides my place of birth, is the fact that I have a hard time tying a sentence together, so the idea of getting in front of people and moving them with a speech — that’s above and beyond
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has moved into a significant lead over Barack Obama among Democratic voters, according to a new Gallup poll.
The March 14-18 national survey of 1,209 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters gave Clinton, a New York senator, a 49 percent to 42 percent edge over Obama, an Illinois senator. The poll has an error margin of 3 percentage points.
The poll was a snapshot of current popular feeling, but Clinton trails Obama in the state-by-state contest which began in January to select a nominee to face presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the November election to succeed President George W. Bush.
The nominees are formally chosen by delegates at the parties’ conventions in the summer.
Gallup said the poll lead was the first statistically significant one for Clinton since a tracking poll conducted February 7-9, just after the Super Tuesday primaries. The two candidates had largely been locked in a statistical tie since then, with Obama last holding a lead over Clinton in a March 11-13 poll.
Gallup said polling data also showed McCain leading Obama 47 percent to 43 percent in 4,367 registered voters’ preferences for the general election. The general election survey has an error margin of 2 percentage points.
The Arizona senator also edged Clinton 48 percent to 45 percent but Gallup said the lead was not statistically significant.
(Reporting by David Morgan, editing by Vicki Allen)
Here is what conservative republicans have to say:
“The irony inherent in Mr. Steele’s remarks is that he himself is arguably the best example of a “bargainer” one could find in American society. He is a self-styled “black conservative.” He uses his race to set himself apart from other conservative writers because his race makes him stand out. I have read most of what he has written over the years. It is nothing terribly unique or cutting edge. In fact, if a white conservative writer offered the same analysis, he would likely never be published simply because Mr. Steele states little more than the obvious. But Mr. Steele is America’s bargainer-in-chief and has consistently used his race as a means of acheiving success beyond his plebian talents. Steele’s bargaining mask is the conservative agenda he pushes, an agenda that leads whites to pat him on the back and show him off as an example of what a “good negro” should be.
Mr. Steele’s analysis of Barack Obama is intellectually dishonest at its core because he remains trapped in his generation’s limited conception of how a black man in America is to be defined. To Steele, there is no difference between Obama and Al Sharpton because, rather than attempt to nuance the ever-evolving nature of black manhood, he is content to deal in extreme caricatures thereof — the black liberal radical and the Uncle Tom. His inability to grasp the reality that in 2008 a black American can rise to prominence based on his own merits is best illustrated by invoking the names of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey. The common thread between these objectively remarkable people is that they are the best at what they do — nothing more, nothing less. Excellence does not have a color. It justifies its own success on its own merits. Sadly, it appears that Mr. Steele would be more comfortable with Mr. Obama if he went out and robbed a bank at gunpoint with a group of gang bangers.
Barack Obama is, without question, the most intelligent of all the presidential candidates. He not only graduated from Harvard Law School, but acheived the highest honor possible by being named Editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was also a successful attorney and devoted community organizer, offering countless hours of personal service to advance his Christian commitment to be his brother’s keeper. And, yes, he is also a gifted speaker and politician. If there is any psychological theory at play here, it is Mr. Steele’s rather distasteful inability to acknowledge the fact that another black man has far superceded his own accomplishments. This psychological phenomenon is most commonly referred to as jealousy.
The Obama’s of the world threaten every assumption upon which Mr. Steele has based his career. This is why he is forced by a toxic combination of ego, self-loathing and ignorance to dismiss Barack Obama as a “bargainer” rather than what he really is — a bridge to the kind of desperately needed racial reconciliation that would render Mr. Steel’s particular brand of race-baiting tripe obsolete. “
By a white conservative Christian Republican married to an amazing African woman.
———————————————–
Conservative columnist George Will penned an op-ed disagreeing with Steele for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Steele has brilliantly dissected the intellectual perversities that present blacks as dependent victims, reduced to trading on their moral blackmail of whites who are eager to be blackmailed in exchange for absolution. But Steele radically misreads Obama, missing his emancipation from those perversities. Obama seems to understand America’s race fatigue, the unbearable boredom occasioned by today’s stale politics generally and by the perfunctory theatrics of race especially.
OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET Philadelphia, Pennsylvania“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator from Illinois and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Negative Campaign ,Malicious Rumors, Gossip and Hatred on Aspiring presidential candidates are set backs and can bring a Destruction in Voting for a Great President.
By Belliah K Theise
On March 9 2008, I posted our opinion on what negative campaigns can do to the communities. DIVISIONS and ANGER, I saw this coming. This is unhealth to the country. By all means, stop attacking each other in one party. You are confusing your supporters. Click the links and see for yourselves the effect of Negative campaigns.
WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the United States and accused its leaders of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism.
As video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has widely aired on television and the Internet, Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Wright and his church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Huffington Post.
Obama wrote that he’s looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, and he’s been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor’s comments for which he had not been present. A campaign spokesman said later that Wright was no longer on Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, without elaborating.
“I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies,” Obama said. “I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.”
In a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and playing down Clinton.
Questions about Obama’s religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He’s had to fight against false Internet rumors suggesting he’s really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States, and now his pastor’s words uttered nearly seven years ago have become an issue.
Obama wrote on the Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are “so contrary to my own life and beliefs,” but they have raised legitimate questions about the nature of his relationship with the pastor and the church.
He explained that he joined Wright’s church nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.
“Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life,” he wrote. “… And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”
He said Wright’s controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them. Because of his ties to the 6,000-member congregation church — he and his wife were married there and their daughters baptized — Obama decided not to leave the church.
Obama also has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
“With Reverend Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good,” he wrote.
Also Friday, the United Church of Christ issued a 1,400-word statement defending Wright and his “flagship” congregation. John H. Thomas, United Church of Christ’s president, lauded Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. Other church leaders praised Wright for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community.
“It’s time for all of us to say no to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends,” Thomas said in the statement.
MoveOn.org is sponsoring a contest tocreate the best political ad for Barack Obama. MoveOn.org did a similar contest in 2004 called “Bush in 30 Seconds”. The winning ad is below.This time around the ads should be positive and convey why Barack Obama should be the next President. The winner will have his or her ad aired nationally and get $20,000 for new film equipment.They even have a message board for collaborators.From MoveOn.org:
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: make a 30-second TV ad that tells the nation why Barack Obama should be our next President.
Today, we’re launching an ad contest called “Obama in 30 Seconds.” Anyone can make an ad about Obama between now and April 1. The public will vote on the best ads, and a panel of top artists, film professionals, and netroots heroes will pick a winner from among the finalists. (Judges include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Naomi Wolf, Oliver Stone, John Legend, Donna Edwards, and Markos Moulitsas. The full list is below.)
Senator Barack Obama won Mississippi’s Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, building his delegate lead over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the final contest before the nominating fight heads to Pennsylvania for a six-week showdown.
Mr. Obama’s victory was built on a wave of support among blacks, who made up half of those who turned out to vote, according to exit polls conducted by television networks and The Associated Press. The polls found that roughly 90 percent of black voters supported Mr. Obama, but only a third of white voters did.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting across Mississippi, Mr. Obama led Mrs. Clinton 60 percent to 37 percent.
“It’s just another win in our column, and we are getting more delegates,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said in declaring victory in an interview on CNN from Chicago, where he arrived Tuesday evening after spending the day in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. “I am grateful to the people of Mississippi for the wonderful support. What we’ve tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country.”
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, won the primary for his party, taking him closer to the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, according to a count by The New York Times.
After a frenzied string of primaries and caucuses for more than two months, Mississippi was alone in holding its contest Tuesday, where 33 delegates were at stake. It was the last primary before a six-week interlude. The Pennsylvania primary on April 22 opens the final stage of the Democratic nominating fight, with eight states, Puerto Rico and Guam left to weigh in.
Mississippi offered Mr. Obama an opportunity to regain his footing after losing the popular vote to Mrs. Clinton last week in three contests, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Mr. Obama had been expected to win resoundingly in Mississippi, a state where 36 percent of the population is black, the highest percentage in the nation. He has enjoyed strong support among black voters and won all the other contests in the Deep South by large margins.
While Mrs. Clinton, of New York, campaigned in Mississippi last week and former President Bill Clinton dropped in over the weekend, the Clinton campaign has mostly been looking ahead to Pennsylvania, with its 158 delegates at stake.
Mrs. Clinton was campaigning in Pennsylvania on Tuesday when Mr. Obama began the day with a final appeal for support in the Mississippi Delta. After having a scrambled-egg breakfast at Buck’s Restaurant in Greenville, he shook hands with those who had gathered outside the strip mall and urged people to vote.
“We need some jobs!” someone from the crowd called to Mr. Obama.
“I promise when I’m president of the United States, I’ll come back to the Delta,” Mr. Obama said. “You all keep me in your prayers, now.”
It is unclear how much difference the late campaigning had. The early surveys of voters, conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, showed that 6 of 10 Democratic primary voters made up their minds more than a month ago.
In the final days of the primary race, Mrs. Clinton raised the idea that Democrats struggling to decide between the candidates could have it both ways, implying that Mr. Obama would make a suitable running mate.
Mr. Obama rejected that idea on Monday as he campaigned in Mississippi, telling voters, “With all due respect, I’ve won twice as many states as Senator Clinton.”
Still, according to preliminary exit polls, not all voters seemed eager to rule out the notion.
As voters left the polls on Tuesday, 6 in 10 Obama supporters said that he should select Mrs. Clinton for vice president if he won the nominating fight. And 4 in 10 Clinton voters said she should choose Mr. Obama if he she won.
As in many other states, an overwhelming share of voters said they were looking for change and were worried about the economy. Mr. Obama won the support of voters who listed those as their chief concerns, according to the surveys of voters.
Mississippi Democrats were twice as likely to say Mr. Obama inspired them about their future as opposed to Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama was more than twice as likely to be seen as honest.
Anita Nichols, who came to see Mr. Obama on the eve of the primary at Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, said she was delighted that voters in her state had an opportunity to be heard in the Democratic presidential contest. Ms. Nichols said she hoped a convincing Mississippi victory would nudge him along in the protracted fight.
“I’m praying that he wins; I really am,” Ms. Nichols said in an interview, an Obama button fastened to her lapel. “This country is ready for change, but it’s not just him. The president can only do so much. He’s got to surround himself with qualified people, and the citizens have to work, too.”
In other words, he is the first real African blood to take over the helm of the world’s most powerful nation. He has surrounded himself with the best of the best and this will be a testimony to the rest of Africa that we too can lead well.
Barack H Obama and make us all proud.
“We’re running against a celebrity. He is someone who gathered throngs of fans overseas,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds told FOX News Saturday.
“Bush, still struggling with record-low approval ratings, held the first of three private fundraising events aimed at helping McCain’s cash-starved campaign keep pace with Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama. ”
wives/husbands …. Disclosure of your personal finances, religion , including the kind of tooth brush one uses. etc etc. I wish African leaders could go through the same screening.
Back Story With The Times’s Jeff Zeleny (
Zambian Chronicle 
