Senator Obama brought his campaign and his collection bucket to San Francisco today for a dinner at the historic Fairmont Hotel on Huntington Square atop Nob Hill. Approximately 1,800 people attended the gathering. The fundraiser was hosted by various groups and included a special South Asian and Pacific Islander VIP session. 200 attended this session, each paying $14,000 to attend and get their picture taken with Senator Obama. The dinner wasn’t as pricey, it was only $2,300 to attend. The event set a record for a one-time fundraising event.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama used his own name and heritage today to make a point about change at a fundraiser that raised a record $7.8 million for his campaign in San Francisco.
The Illinois senator said it is “a testament to the American spirit that I’m even standing here before you” as the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee, because some Americans are “still getting past the name,” which he said some consider funny.
“Change is always tough, and electing me is change … and it means that people are going to hesitate a little bit,” Obama told a crowd of about 200 deep-pocketed supporters at a VIP reception for South Asian and Pacific Islander supporters at the Fairmont Hotel.
“Barack Obama – they’re still getting past that name,” he said. “But it’s a testament to the American spirit that I’m even standing here before you as the Democratic nominee.”
Later, speaking to a dinner crowd of about 350, Obama sought to reassure Democrats, whom he said typically “get nervous and skittish right around this time” and worry that attacks and mudslinging will begin in the final weeks of the presidential race. Obama campaign workers said the $7.8 million tally was a record for a political fundraiser.
The Obama campaign has launched a new campaign ad to run in the battleground state of Ohio. The ad is a 30 spot. In addition, the Obama campaign produced a flyer to be sent to accompany the ad. The mailing costs of the flyer are being covered by the AFL-CIO. The flyer is below.
The ad and the flyer attack Senator McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, for lobbying on behalf the German-owned DHL air freight company in its efforts to buy Airborne Express and accuses McCain of using his influence to ensure passage of a bill allowing the sale. According to the Annenberg Political Center’s Fact Check the ad is misleading:
Ads from the AFL-CIO and the Obama campaign claim that McCain is partly to blame for the loss of more than 8,000 jobs in Ohio. They paint a false picture.
There’s at least some truth in both ads: German-based DHL announced a deal that could result in 8,200 lost jobs in Wilmington, Ohio. And McCain did in fact oppose an amendment that would have kept DHL from buying Wilmington-based Airborne Express. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, was also a DHL lobbyist charged with easing the merger through the Senate.
But the ads go too far. Some statements about McCain are misleading and some of the inferences the ads invite are unsubstantiated:
The ads charge that McCain opposition to a 2003 amendment helped DHL and amounted to turning his back on workers. That’s misleading. McCain said he opposed a version of the amendment because it was a special project inserted into an unrelated bill, not to help DHL. And the Teamsters union praised the merger at the time, saying that it would lead to more jobs. And at first, more jobs indeed followed.
The ads also imply that the DHL merger is a direct cause of the job losses in Ohio, which we find to be both unlikely and unsubstantiated. Airborne Express had laid off 2,000 employees before the merger, and analysts at the time said that the struggling carrier would need to make expensive investments in its international infrastructure to remain competitive.
The full analysis and background is at Fact Check. It should be noted that this is an ad that the Obama campaign doesn’t want you to see. The fact is that the Obama campaign is running a series of negative ads across the country but they are not informing the media. See my earlier post entitled The Obama Campaign Not Disclosing All of Its Ads for more information on this story.
The world’s glaciers are in retreat and perhaps no where else on Earth has the effects of global climate change been more visible than in Montana’s Glacier National Park and in Alberta’s Waterton National Park. When the area was first surveyed by naturalists in the 1880s, the two parks contained over 150 different glaciers. Today there are under 35 left and by 2030 there will be none. The pristine wilderness is a globally significant biological hotspot, protecting elk, moose, deer, mountain goats, bull trout and a host of other wildlife and plant species. It is also one of the most intact and diverse ecosystems in this type of climate in the world. It isn’t just natual beauty in peril, it’s also the aquifier in the Mountain West that depends on replenishments from the snow pack. That aquifier then grows crops and provides drinking water.
But just this week comes word of a new threat to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which spans the border between Montana and Alberta. Multiple proposals for mountain-top removal coal mines and coalbed methane extraction in this area are threatening the Canadian side of the border. These include Cline Mining’s Lodgepole Mine, which the U.S. State Department has opposed due to “significant adverse impacts.”
If you care add your voice in protecting the Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, you can sign this petition to the Right Honorable Michael H. Wilson, Canadian Ambassador to the United States.
Though Senator Obama chairs the US Senate Select Subcommittee for European Affairs and NATO, he hasn’t called a meeting of this important subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee in almost two years, coincidentally that’s the amount of time that he’s been running for President. And if the events of the past ten days are any indication, Obama was clearly caught off-guard by events in the Caucusus. Senator McCain wasn’t and neither was Senator Clinton. Here’s a press release from Senator Clinton from April of this year where she warned of increasing Russian intimidation of Georgia.
Statement by Hillary Clinton on Georgia and Ukraine (4/18/2008)
I am deeply disturbed by the latest Russian actions regarding Georgia, and Russia’s broader policies towards its neighbors.
Several weeks ago I called on NATO to extend a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest Summit. I emphasized that this move would be a litmus test for the success of President Bush’s leadership of the trans-Atlantic community. My support for MAP was based on the need to send a positive signal to Tbilisi and Kyiv to encourage them to stay on track with their positive reforms as well as to send a signal of our concern to Moscow about the future security of these countries.
I deeply regret President Bush’s inability to convince our NATO allies to take this action. This is the first time in memory a U.S. President has traveled to a NATO summit and failed to achieve his publicly proclaimed goals.
Now the Russian government has taken advantage of the lack of unity coming out of the Bucharest Summit to further ratchet up the pressure on young democracies on its borders. Moscow’s actions this week to strengthen ties with the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia undermine the territorial integrity of the state of Georgia and are clearly designed to destabilize the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Georgia is a small democratic state in a turbulent region. It must not be allowed to be undermined. Two weeks ago President Bush sat with President Putin in Sochi just a few kilometers away from the Georgian border. He prided himself on his close working relationship with Vladimir Putin. President Bush should call on the Russian leadership to immediately rescind these steps.
“Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.” — Governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee
Perhaps not a full blown panic as yet, but a number of Democratic leaders are both privately and publicly expressing great concern that Obama’s message of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ is not resonating as it should given the structural advantage that the Democratic Party possesses over the GOP. Across the United States, the Democratic candidates for governorships, the US Senate and the US House of Representatives enjoy comfortable leads over their Republican challengers. Even in strong Republican states, Democrats are seeing the polls point to resounding victories come November. In Alaska, the Democrats stand to gain both the US Senate seat and the sole Congressional seat safely held by the GOP since 1968 and 1973 respectively. And yet where Democrats in these local and Congressional races lead, Senator Obama trails Senator McCain by more than the margin of error.
In the Democratic primary, Obama benefited from being the leading anti-war candidate and he managed to coalesce early and effectively the Anybody But Clinton vote. In the race for the nomination, Obama entered as an unknown and that seem to sell well among a Democratic constituency eager for ‘change’ in Washington. Coupled with his ‘hope’ mantra and the fact that he corralled the African-American vote largely on the fact that Obama is black, by assiduously playing the race card, and frankly out-hustling Senator Clinton in the caucus states (yes, I’m aware that there was fraud but one does have to hustle to commit fraud, doesn’t one?) Obama found his groove early sweeping ten states in early to late February.
But then a strange thing happened on the way to the nomination, Obama stumbled as voters began to ask what ‘hope’ and ‘change’ actually meant. Despite scandals that would have undone any lesser messiahs, Obama smirked, cajoled and bullied his way to the nomination. But the damage was done. A third of Clinton supporters remain adamantly opposed to the very junior Senator from Illinois and perhaps another third are largely tepid on his candidacy. And while the Democratic primaries saw record turnout, they still represent but a fraction of the total eligible and likely voters come November. In the caucus states that propelled Obama to victory, the average turnout was under ten percent. Even in Iowa, the highest turnout in a caucus state, the turnout was still a paltry 14.5%. Translation: Obama now has to pitch to a much wider audience.
Though Obama enjoyed a bump in the polls after clinching the Democratic nomination in early June, neither he nor Senator McCain have really found their groove though if this race is a heavyweight fight then McCain is scoring points left and right. The speech in front of the Prussian Victory Column, the Siegessaeule, may have played well in Berlin but in Peoria less so. McCain openly mocked Obama on his celebrity status. That opened a cut. Then came the body blows with McCain punching hard on energy with Obama countering aimlessly with the need for us to inflate our tires and more backtracking that just leaves the average voter dizzy. Then came the unexpected crisis in Georgia on which McCain showed both a confidence and a resolve but also an ability to make a complex issue easily understandable to the average voter. His comments that “today we are all Georgians” and that “history is often made in remote and far-off places” were simply brilliant. And then last night at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, McCain shone while Obama was off.
Perhaps too early to tell, but McCain seems to be finding his groove while Obama remains mired in the platitudes of the bland and empty. The time for soaring rhetoric is past, this election will be won with hard policy proposals. Obama’s ‘hope’ and ‘change’ mantra won’t put gas in anyone’s tanks or even inflate one’s tires so to speak, while McCain’s hard-nosed energy policies are at least perceived by the voting public as a concrete proposal. And with both Obama and now Speaker Nancy Pelosi backtracking on off-shore drilling, score one for McCain and the GOP who seemed to have a better grasp of the pulse of the electorate. Of course, the backtracking only adds to the credibility of the Republican energy positions. They actually don’t have to be credible, only be seen as credible. The GOP wins by sticking to their guns, the Democrats lose by the constant shifts in their position. Incredibly, the lack of a spine comes back to haunt the Democrats, time and again.
Thus it is not surprising that some Democratic leaders are increasingly concerned and not surprising that many of them were supporters of the more policy wonkish Senator Clinton (then again, I’m guessing Obama’s daughters are more wonkish than Obama). From the New York Times:
As Senator Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination next week, party leaders in battleground states say the fight ahead against Senator John McCain looks tougher than they imagined, with Mr. Obama vulnerable on multiple fronts despite weeks of cross-country and overseas campaigning.
These Democrats — 15 governors, members of Congress and state party leaders — say Mr. Obama has yet to convert his popularity among many Americans into solutions to crucial electoral challenges: showing ownership of an issue, like economic stewardship or national security; winning over supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and minimizing his race and experience level as concerns for voters.
Mr. Obama has run for the last 18 months as the candidate of hope. Yet party leaders — while enthusiastic about Mr. Obama and his state-by-state campaign operations — say he must do more to convince the many undecided Democrats and independents that he would address their financial anxieties rather than run, by and large, as an agent of change — given that change, they note, is not an issue.
Danish Wind Company Vestas
The world’s biggest wind turbine maker has seen business boom amid uncertainty about oil prices. Denmark’s Vestas now has a backlog of orders worth more than $10 billion. I have written about Denmark’s wind industry before, see my post Peaking Your Interest — Wind Energy. In the United States, T. Boone Pickens has proposed investing heavily in wind farms across the Plains. Texas and Nebraksa have just completed new projects with more on the way.
T. Boone Pickens Energy Commercial
France Builds A Nuclear Power Plant
France is building its newest nuclear reactor, the first in 10 years, costing $5.1 billion. But already, President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that France will build another like it. More from the New York Times.
Sunny California Looks to Solar
Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. From the New York Times:
The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.
The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the new plants, which will use photovoltaic technology to turn sunlight directly into electricity, to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and solar thermal plants, which use the sun’s heat to boil water.
California Equality Ad
I must admit that I don’t quite grasp the ad.
Manhunt Founder Steps Down As Chairman
As I reported yesterday, Jonathan Crutchley the founder and Chairman of Manhunt.net, a gay hookup sex site, contributed the maximum $2,300 allowed by law to the John McCain campaign. The Board asked for and received his resignation. More from Towleroad.
San Francisco’s PlanetOut Faces NASDAQ Delisting Yet Again
San Francisco-based PlanetOut, owners of the GAY.com and PlanetOut.com websites, faces delisting of its stock on the NASDAQ. It’s not the first time. Last year, the struggling company did a reverse split in order to shore up its stock price above the NASDAQ minimum. The company sold off its ill-fated cruise business to pay off debt and received an investment from Bill Gates of Microsoft. Earlier this year, PlanetOut sold its flagship magazines Out and The Advocate.
PlanetOut reports that it received a notice from the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Department that the stock will be delisted unless it can comply with Nasdaq rules and maintain “a minimum market value of $5,000,000 of publicly held shares (defined as total shares outstanding, less any shares held by officers, directors or beneficial owners of 10% or more of the total shares outstanding)” for a period of 10 consecutive trading days or face the consequences. The company has until October 30 and officers have indicated they are monitoring the situation and considering the company’s options. In its latest quarterly conference call, PlanetOut reported outstanding liabilities of $100 million USD.
Karl Rove: Gay Rights Not an Issue in 2008 Election
This November, three states — Arizona, California and Florida — will vote on the issue. Whether it will have an effect on the presidential contest remains to be seen. Karl Rove doesn’t think it will be. Rove predicted in an interview that the issue would be less important in 2008. “It has a lower profile, but it will be an issue in people’s minds,” Rove said. “The bigger issues will be the economy, terrorism, healthcare, energy.” More from the Los Angeles Times.
New Zealand Bishops Offer A Voting Guide in Advance of General Election
The United States is not the only country holding an election this November. New Zealand heads to the polls on November 15th to determine the future of Prime Minister Helen Clark’s nine year old Labour government. Catholic bishops in New Zealand have issued a guide to help their worshipers decide who to vote for in the country’s upcoming elections. The guide includes advice on the Church’s views of abortion, embryo research, euthanasia and gay parenting. They are not too keen on the idea of gay families. More from Pink News.
Gay Sex Legalized in Panamá
On 29th July, Pananamian President Martin Torrijos and Health Minister Rosario E. Turner signed a decree repealing a 1949 law that made gay sex an illegal offence that would incur a $500 (£266) fine or a prison sentence. The ban on gay sex was found to be inconsistent with international human rights treaties that Panamá has signed, as well as the Panamanian Constitution.
Where Bans on Gay Sex Still Exist in the Western Hemisphere
There are currently 11 nations in the Western Hemisphere where homosexuality is still illegal. Those countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.
MI-5 Recruting Gay Spies
BRITAIN’S domestic intelligence agency MI5 is actively recruiting gay spies and wants its staff to be more open about their sexuality, the Financial Times has reported. The chief executive of Stonewall, a gay rights lobby group, told the business paper it had been hired by the Security Service – better known as MI5 – to help the agency encourage more gay applicants for positions. More from the Herald Sun.
In the few polls that include third party candidates, Nader has been polling between 4% and 7%. The independent ticket of Nader/Gonzalez is currently on the ballot in 30 states plus he is a write-in candidate in three others. This interview is from August 2, 2008. In this interview, Nader speaks to corporation personhood. It’s worth a listen.
Senator Obama is doing well among Hispanics generally nation-wide. Hispanic registered voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain by 66% to 23%, according to a nationwide survey of 2,015 Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center that came out on July 24th. However in New Mexico, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of Hispanics, Obama is facing some resistance among the traditionally Democratic but socially conservative Hispanics particularly in the southern part of the state, the area around Las Cruces.
Pink morning light climbs over the jagged Organ Mountains, casting a glow on the Rio Grande, the lifeblood of this otherwise unforgiving desert.
Emma Jean Cervantes, the “Chile Queen” of the Mesilla Valley in southern New Mexico, is beginning her morning ritual. Every day, this grandmother of six and savvy businesswoman checks her land south of Las Cruces. She talks to her chile plants. In early summer, they are still baby shoots poking through the sandy dirt.
“They will tell me how they’re doing, if they need water,” Cervantes says.
A hands-on CEO, Cervantes makes sure her workers are weeding the right fields, that the irrigation ditches haven’t flooded her cayenne chiles, and that the pecan trees, with their canopies of rich green leaves and precious shade, are growing well.
Before heading to her office and chile processing plant, Cervantes stops in the home where she grew up, then raised her own children. Cooking relaxes her. She takes time to make her own tortillas and salsa from sun-dried New Mexican red chiles, grown in her home garden. Every day, Cervantes prepares lunch so she can enjoy a homemade meal of enchiladas or chile con carne with her grown children, who now help her run their expanding farm empire.
“La Familia” is everything in this community: Family, tradition, loyalty, politics. Cervantes’ sister and one of her sons are both powerful lawmakers in the New Mexico legislature, and the history of political involvement stretches back generations among the families who settled the Mesilla Valley when it was part of Mexico, and before that, a colony of Spain.
This country is as fertile for Democrats as it is for chiles. One old-timer explained that party affiliation comes at birth: “We are Hispanic. We are Catholic. We are Democrats.”
Even though Barack Obama has been polling well nationally among Hispanic voters, he faces a huge challenge in must-win New Mexico. An overwhelming number of voters here adored Hillary Clinton and distrust Obama. If Bill Clinton was the “first black president,” then, to many around Las Cruces, Hillary could have been the first Hispanic president. They identified with her that closely.
“I loved her comment about glass ceilings,” said Cervantes, who is deeply concerned about women’s issues. “In agriculture, there are a lot of barriers to women. I have broken a lot of glass ceilings.”
Mary Jane Garcia, a New Mexico state senator and pledged Clinton delegate, cried as Clinton conceded. She first met Hillary Clinton in 1992 and speaks of her like a sister who has been wronged.
“It hurt me deeply,” she said of Clinton’s loss. “I’m really struggling. I’m going to Denver to cast my vote only for Hillary and no one else. She’s good. She’s kind. She’s compassionate.”
Garcia, 71, lives in Doña Ana, just north of Las Cruces. She thinks Obama has come off as condescending and arrogant.
“I don’t know one single Hispanic over 50 who will cast a vote for Obama,” she said, conceding that “there have always been conflicts between blacks and browns.”
Obama’s only hope, said Garcia, is to name Clinton as his vice president.
“That might push us all to go to the polls and vote,” she said.
Rather than dwell on what was said or not said, I thought I would take a look at how the pro-Obama blogs rated Senator Obama on his appearance at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency held tonight at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California down in suburban Orange County.
The Huffington Post, aka the Huff Obama, took a mostly factual approach to tonight’s event:
Presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain differed sharply on abortion Saturday, with McCain saying a baby’s human rights begin “at conception,” while Obama restated his support for legalized abortion.
Appearing on the same stage for the first time in months, although they overlapped only briefly, the two men shared their views on a range of moral, foreign and domestic issues as they near their respective nominating conventions.
Obama said he would limit abortions in the late stages of pregnancy if there are exceptions for the mother’s health. He said he knew that people who consider themselves pro-life will find his stance “inadequate.”
He said the government should do more to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to help struggling new mothers, such as providing needed resources to the poor, and better adoption services.
McCain expressed his anti-abortion stand simply and quickly, saying human rights begin the instant a human egg is fertilized. McCain, who adopted a daughter from Bangladesh, also called for making adoption easier.
Some of the comments are more telling:
BO had better get a debate coach-that is all I can say. I am sorry but his inexperience REALLY is a problem.
Obama had a bad night… he’s just off vacation. And no teleprompter.
The party is not over by any means. But, just admit it JMC rocked the house tonight.
Below the fold, reports from Crooks & Liars and Taylor Marsh. (more…)
