Time for my favorite post of the week, time to get campy on a Saturday night. Here’s When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich from Finian’s Rainbow, a musical set in the cave country of Kentucky. The movie starred Fred Astaire and Petula Clark.

Somewhere along the line Obama went from being the idle poor to being the idle rich.

I also think the song touches on an issue that has recently reared its ugly head in this campaign. If you’re white and poor and voting for Clinton, it must be because you’re a racist. If you’re white and rich and voting for Clinton like say in New Hampshire, then those folks are not being called racist. The good folks in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky are being disparaged because they are poor. It’s sickening.

One of the unexpected joys arising from the madness that is Obama is the number of new blogs. These new voices are adding to the conversation and unlike the old line blogs, the conversation is civil and the discussion frank. Riverdaughter and Katiebird et al have one fine blog over at The Confluence. Now Stephanie has joined the fray with her new blog Hillary or Bust! Welcome!

Here is one her of her posts!

Never mind the fact that the mainstream media, certain Democratic leaders, and Obama himself have insulted Hillary Clinton and used subtle sexist tactics to bring her down.

My first gripe about Obama was that he just felt insincere to me. I just didn’t like him, didn’t feel a warmth or sincerity from him. I felt that his lofty words were hollow. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But he just didn’t feel like a good person to me.

And initially, I was excited to have a black candidate for president. I felt it was a positive step forward. I did not have negative feelings for him in the beginning.

But as time wore on, my suspicions of him grew, and I felt less at ease with him as a candidate. Then the nastiness sprung up - from Obama supporters themselves, tearing Hillary down like a pack of wolves. I spoke with young women, who should have at least be proud that a woman was running for President, and heard them sneer at Hillary for being “too ambitious.” What? Anyone who runs for President is ambitious by nature!

These young ladies were being sexist, and they didn’t even know it. They had grown up too much with their peers posting half-naked photos of themselves on MySpace. Stripper culture had seeped into their brains, and they could not see the reason to respect a strong adult woman. No wonder “Obama Girl” became famous…back when I was in college, if that sort of sexist, demeaning crap was put out about a candidate, all the women on campus would have been up in arms. But not these days…the girls are too busy trying to get a chance to appear on “Girls Gone Wild.”

So it was the Obama supporters themselves that initially put me off in a big way, and then I started noticing the disconnect between Obama’s words and his heart (or lack thereof).

The Rev. Wright fiasco sealed it for me. NOT because of what Wright said, but because Obama, after 20 years of close association with this man, decided to drop him and pretend he didn’t agree with him, because it was politically expedient to do so.

At that point, I knew that Obama was full of hot air - that he was probably a pandering liar at best and a con-man at worst.

Upon further investigation, I found out the story behind his ties to some really shady characters back in Chicago. Why isn’t the mainstream media all over this? Hm. Perhaps because they want a weak opponent for McCain in the fall. That’s all I can figure.

Regardless, I cannot with any conscience vote for Obama in the fall, if Hillary is not on the ticket. Obama is a fake, and a fraud, and he frankly scares me with his charisma. (A friend of mine had a posterized picture of Obama on her cellphone, with rays of light drawn out from his head. It reminded me of propaganda for Mao Tse Tung in Communist China. Yikes!)

The insults against Hillary, the lack of concern over the voters in Michigan in Florida, Obama’s crazy supporters, and the shadiness of Obama himself, all lead me to the conclusion that our country would actually be better off with four more years of Republicans in the White House than Obama. That’s how bad a feeling I have.

And what a shame too - Hillary could turn this country around, if given the chance.

I couldn’t agree more. I can’t wait to read more!

The Washington Post reports on Obama’s persistent problems with key segments of the Democratic Party. This one is especially odd since Senator Casey did after all endorse Barack Obama before the Pennsylvania primary. The endorsement did not help Obama and it is not likely to help in a general election. The issue is really values.

It’s the transformation of a group of voters we might call Casey Democrats, after the late Robert P. Casey Sr., governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995.

(more…)

The price for a barrel of benchmark light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $2.17 to settle at record close of $126.29 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, prices surged to $127.82 a barrel, also a new high. This surpasses my estimate of $125 a barrel of oil before the end of May. Sparking the spike is likely the inability of President Bush to persuade Saudi Arabia to pump more oil. The Saudis consented to 300,000 bpd increase. His comments before the Knesset probably were’t very helpful nor was a report in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that the US is determined to strike at Iran before the end of the year.

Goldman Sachs upped its YE2008 estimate to $141.00 a barrel yesterday. That is perhaps conservative. While oil is likely to pull back from whatever highs it reaches in May/June, it is unlikely to drop below a $115 a barrel floor. From August through the end of the year, oil is likely to trade in a range $120 to $150 a barrel. In effect, oil markets are undergoing a structural repricing. Weather, consumption and any geo-political are likely to dictate how oil behaves. If US-Iranians tensions escalate or if the Nigerian pipeline is not mended by the end of this month, oil is likely to move past $130 a barrel very quickly.

USA Today reports:

Nearly 570,000 people — or 28% of the state’s registered voters — already have cast ballots, says Scott Moore, spokesman for the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. That’s more than half of the nearly 860,000 people who voted in the 2004 primary.

Voter registration also has jumped. Since January, more than 75,000 people registered to vote, nearly 4% of all voters.

In addition, about 90,000 voters changed their party affiliation this year. More than eight in 10 of those party switchers migrated to the Democratic Party — a sign of the heightened interest in the nomination battle between senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. (There is a Republican primary in the state Tuesday as well, though Sen. John McCain has already wrapped up the party’s nomination.)

Oregon is the only state where no one actually goes to a polling place to vote. Residents vote by mail or drop the ballots off at designated collection spots, including the election offices in each of the state’s 36 counties. Ballots must be received by 8 p.m. local time Tuesday. Note: That’s “received by.” Postmarks don’t count.

Does all this early voting mean that election officials have started counting?

No, says Moore. State law bars workers from starting the tally until Tuesday morning. No results will be released until after 8 p.m. Pacific time.

The state uses paper ballots, which are run through optical scanning machines. Despite that, Moore says election officials generally have more than half the votes tallied by 8 p.m.

Kentucky, which also votes Tuesday, doesn’t have a similar early voting system. About 20,000 people already have voted absentee, says Les Fugate, spokesman for the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office. The Bluegrass State has not seen a big increase in voter registration, he says.

I wonder if David Vitter and Eliot Spitzer had a moment such as this one from the classic British comedy, The New Statesman that follows the exploits of Tory MP Alan B’stard. One can only hope.

Here is the Saturday, May 17th, 2008 edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Famine Stalks The Horn of Africa
The New York Times reports that after three seasons of below-average rainfall, the people of central Somalia are beginning to fear the worst.

Zimbabwe Sets Run-off Election Date
Zimbabwe’s delayed runoff election between President Robert Mugabe, who has led the nation for nearly three decades, and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been set for June 27, the country’s election commission said Friday. More from the New York Times and the UK Guardian.

Italian Poll: Expel the Roma
Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the new rightwing government, want to see all of the country’s 150,000 Gypsies or Roma, many of them Italian citizens, expelled, according to an opinion poll. More from the UK Guardian.

Fifth Latin America and European Summit in Lima, Peru
European and Latin American leaders have pledged to fight poverty, global warming and high food prices as the Fifth Latin American-European Summit opened in Lima. More from the Miami Herald.

Here is the By The Fault Weekend Reader, a series of interesting articles. The first is a video.

Mark Bittman on What’s Wrong With What We Eat

How To Make Your Diet Greener
The Christian Science Monitor examines way you can make your food shopping greener.

Grim Reaping
This article from Common Dreams looks at the impact of the industrialization of agriculture upon the land.

Livestock’s Environmental Impact
This report from the Food & Agricultural Organization looks at the impact of livestock on the environment.

The Japanese Diet
Thanks to the relatively healthier Japanese diet and lifestyle, Japanese women and men live longer and healthier than everyone else on Earth. This article from WebMD explores the health benefits of the Japanese diet.