Obama taps deep pockets, overtaking Clinton in business donations
by John Byrne
Employees in nine major industries are beginning to turn their money toward Barack Obama's campaign -- a potential new sign that US business is placing their bets on Obama to win the Democratic nomination.Campaign finance reports now show that employees of nine major US industries -- including defense, communications, health, construction and Wall Street -- gave the lion's share of their contributions to the junior senator from Illinois instead of rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in the first three months of 2008. All of these industries favored Clinton in 2007. |
NY gov: I revealed affairs over fear of rogue state police
by Michael Gormley
Gov. David Paterson said Friday that he revealed his past marital affairs once he took office in part because he had heard that a rogue group of state police was investigating politicians.Paterson said that he had no proof, but that "over 10" lawmakers from both parties statewide told him about traffic stops and leaks by police to news organizations about brushes with the law. |
This morning's score: Obama by 9 in N.C.; it's a tie in Indiana
by Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence
Two sets of polls from Zogby International as the day begins:• In North Carolina, Zogby says, its latest tracking poll gives Sen. Barack Obama a 9 percentage point lead (46%-37%) over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as they head toward Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary in the Tarheel State. |
Pat Tillman’s mother still not sure she’s being told the truth
by Raw Story
The mother of Pat Tillman is speaking out about her son’s death in her first television interview, to be broadcast this Sunday on 60 Minutes.Tillman, a pro football player, joined the military after 9/11 and was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2004. The Army initially lauded him as a hero who had died storming a hill in the face of enemy fire and even awarded him the Silver Star. They only revealed five weeks later that he had actually died by friendly fire. |
A Special Report: The Right's America-Hating Preacher
by Robert Parry
One of the advantages that the American Right has achieved from investing tens of billions of dollars in media – from talk radio and cable TV, to print and the Internet – is the ability to define what is and what isn’t a “scandal,” a powerful factor in determining who wins national elections. |
Hillary Joins the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
by Brent Budowsky
Even a creative Hollywood producer couldn't have conjured up a film in which Bill and Hillary Clinton would pursue the tactics of personal destruction against a Democrat in full-throated alliance with the vast right-wing conspiracy!Wonder why Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe sings the praises of Fox News with the hilarious compliment that they are the most fair of the cable networks? Wonder why Hillary goes on Bill O'Reilly's show confident O'Reilly will further the demonization attack against Barack Obama? Three guesses why Hillary's great new friend and ally is none other than right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, a founding leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons? |
John McCain and the Luck of the (Scotch-) Irish
by David Michael Green
John McCain has to be the luckiest politician in human history.He doesn’t have the presidency in his grasp yet, but he is within spitting distance, and that alone is an astonishing fact.There is no way, for starters, that McCain should ever have won the Republican nomination he is about to. For all his horrible politics, he is perceived by the sundry Klingons and Borg who make up the voting ranks of his party as insufficiently insane to be a true-blue (true-red?) believer in the full creed of Jesus, money and violence (not necessarily in that order of importance, of course). After all, he hasn’t personally invaded a country yet (unless you count his blasting Vietnamese peasants into obliteration when he actually served in the military – which somehow doesn’t seem to matter to these folks except when Democrats don’t do it). And, since he politely wipes the blood off his chin when he eats his red meat, he is apparently too civilized to be president for those who think George W. Bush is one of history’s greats. |
Contrary to His Claims, Senator John McCain Is Not a Goldwater Conservative
by John W. Dean
Arizona Senator John McCain recently completed a "biographical" tour of the country in an effort to keep his name in the media as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, given the fact that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are currently consuming much of the newsroom oxygen. McCain ended that tour in Prescott, Arizona. |
The Fire Bell In The Night And Our Real Terror
by Danny Schechter
New York, May Day: Thomas Jefferson used a phrase in a letter that is still ringing all these years later. Here's his thought, a candidate for "THE WORD" segment on the Colbert Report:"I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant, but this momentous question like A FIREBELL IN THE NIGHT [caps mine], awakened and filled me with terror." |
Tomgram: Pepe Escobar on Iran under the Gun
by Tom Engelhardt
It's like old times in the Persian Gulf. As of this week, a second aircraft carrier battle task force is being sent in -- not long after Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen highlighted planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran; just as the Bush administration's catechism of charges against the Iranians in Iraq reaches something like a fever pitch; at the moment when rumors of, leaks about, and denials of Pentagon back-to-the-drawing-board planning for new ways to attack Iran are zipping around ("Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in Iraq…"); and only days before the U.S. military in Iraq is supposed to conduct its latest media dog-and-pony show on Iranian support for Iraqi Shi'ite militias ("…including date stamps on newly found weapons caches showing that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate…"). On the dispatching of that second aircraft carrier, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the following comment: "I don't see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder." |
The possible future: Defusing violence, one bump at a time
by Robert C. Koehler
Lurid headlines have been blooming in my fair city, Chicago, along with the daffodils. A dozen dead, 40 injured in less than a week. The mayor calls a gun summit. The police chief promises to send SWAT teams in full battle dress to troubled neighborhoods. |
American and Israeli War Crimes: Same Atrocities, Different Responses
by Dave Lindorff
In the last few days, both the Israeli military and the US military have fired missiles into homes, in an effort to target what they said were terrorists, in the process killing many innocent civilians.But what a contrast we see in both the reporting on these events, and in the response within the two countries! |
Crumbcatchers
by Joyce Marcel
In the Roaring Twenties my grandfather, Diamond Ben, was a flashy guy. He had a taste for Cadillacs. He owned a tux and a diamond stickpin. He had a big house by the beach, and two garages on Broadway. He hung out with celebrities.But my grandfather lost the house and the two garages and the flashy life in the early Thirties, and my mother's family was forced to move into a tenement apartment in the Bronx. |
Overkill and Short Shrift
by Bob Herbert
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again. |
Indiana Holiday
by Gail Collins
Our question for today is: What does the debate over that cheesy plan for a gas tax holiday mean to the American voting public? This all started with John McCain, who proposed suspending the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day in order to give regular hard-working Americans “a little relief.” In terms of rational policy-making, this is a little bit like announcing that you want to reduce tensions in the Middle East by drilling an enormous hole in Sweden. |
