A comparison?

In Northern Ireland today the Democratic Unionist Ian Paisley was sworn in as the first minister, with Sinn Fein (read: IRA) will take up his post as Paisley's deputy. World leaders are finally daring to hope that bloodshed in Northern Ireland will end.

I mention this for two reasons. The first is that this was an intense, deadly and bloody fight between two bodies of the same religion: the Protestants and the Catholics. Yes, they are officially divided into "Republicans" and "Loyalists," but for all intents and purposes, this was a religious power struggle, and everyone knows it. And it took decades of actual fighting to resolve the issue at last.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The second reason I mention this is that these two sides, who are not exactly best buds, were able to overcome their differences for the sake of their suffering people. The people of America are not exactly suffering as a whole at this point, but the soldiers in Iraq certainly aren't having the time of their lives. We can only hope that the Democrats and Republicans can have the same levels of maturity as the Unionists and Sinn Fein.

The New Plan

Despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans want our troops to remain in Iraq, Bush will keep them there as long as he wants, because the amount of Republicans in Congress is just enough to keep the Democrats from gaining a two-thirds majority. However, the Democrats are doing just as Bush asked, and cooperating with him, trying to reach a bipartisan decision to help the soldiers in Iraq. The new bill they are working on would deliver the money to the president in two stages. No, the president is not going to like it. Yes, he is going to whine and complain to the media about how by not giving him exactly what he wants the Dems are being unpatriotic, not supporting the troops, and probably killing babies too, just for good measure. But in the end, this will probably do what the Democrats couldn't do with the first bill: pass with enough support to show Bush that this new Congress really isn't messing around. Sure, there will be enough "loyal Bushies" in Congress to fight with the Dems. But at last it will pass, and at last there will be a viable option to getting us out of this war.

One Signature

It's becoming more and more obvious why we need a Democratic President. Bush has, in the words of Barack Obama, "stubbornly ignored the will of the American people. " I don't think that anyone else could have put it better. The Democratic majority in Congress is a direct result of the unhappiness of the populace with the Bush administration's current course of action. The only thing that Bush is going to do by vetoing the war is to further that discontent, and put the Democrats in place to hold congress in the upcoming elections. However, I would rather see one less soldier in Iraq die for an unwanted, unpopular war than see all the seats in Congress go to the Democratic party. Senator Obama is absolutely right in this instance. It is time to get out of Iraq and think through a new strategy for the war on terrorism. Maybe, this time, our commanders will actually think through a strategy.

The Amazing Disappearing Gonzales

At this point, the Alberto Gonzales scandal is beginning to look a lot like the war in Iraq. In both cases, it is pretty clear that there was wrongdoing. In both cases, the Bush administration set the PR machine in motion to run damage control by purposefully deceiving the public. And in both cases, President Bush has stuck by the side that is clearly wrong, and defended his position by criticizing his detractors. The e-mails released by the Justice Department make it clear that the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for not being "Loyal Bushies." However, Alberto Gonzales has outright lied about, or claimed not to remember the contents of, the e-mails, in an attempt to save his own job. And, of course, through it all, Bush has stuck by his side. I guess it pays to be a loyal Bushy.

Heroes

Just how shameful can the military operations in Iraq get? Dick Cheney tells the media that not following George W.'s plan exactly, and handing the man who has squandered so much of the country's capital, both financial and diplomatic, would amount to abandoning our heroic US soldiers. However, for the sake of the public relations of the government, which are just in tip-top shape to begin with, the government will cover up the death of Pat Tillman, killed by friendly fire, as the world has just learned. There is no doubting Tillman's bravery and heroism, but even that isn't safe from the clutches of GW. Both one of the men traveling with Tillman and Jessica Lynch, who spent time as a POW in Iraq, testified before Congress about the elaborate PR spin that the army put out to halt the spread of word about his death. Lynch had a year-in-review worthy quote while answering the Congressmen's questions, seated next to the Tillman family: "The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate lies." The American people at this time don't need the lies and coverups that are bound to come with a pro-war administration, especially when it comes bundled billions of extra dollars spent and the loss of thousands of American lives. Pat Tillman was a hero for his bravery, not for his death, and if it were not for this idiotic, needless war, the world would have a lot more heroes.

Money Doesn't Matter Until It's All We Have To Report On

As my esteemed colleague Sean pointed out in his "Records" blog, Barack Obama was the big story of the recent quarterly reports on fundraising for still young Presidential Campaigns. Hillary raised the most, of course, and Edwards is "falling behind," despite raising a record $14 million dollars (or it would have been a record has it stood alone this cycle). Richardson looks like the most likely candidate to be "On Fourth" with $7 million (about how much Kerry raised in his first quarter in 2003), with Dodd and Biden running strong at $5 million and $4 million, respectively.

The Republican side is more telling to me, however. Romney 4.0 raised $21 million, Giuliani $15 million, and McCain $12.5 million and the rest scattered. Poor Senator Brownback and Governor Miuke Huckabee raised dismally small amounts of money (only about $500,000 for Huckabee), who seem to be the closest to the true Republican views of most primary voters.

Pundits have been talking about how this could be the downfall of McCain, and how he is now out of the top tier. What? $12.5 million seems pretty good to me, and this is a hard-driving candidate, to be sure. He was once considered the shoo-in, and he still has good friends here in New Hampshire. His war support is dragging him down, but he still has many, many, many things going for him.

Romney? I call him Romney 4.0 because he has run on so many different positions in the past (some more liberal than Ted Kennedy's, to use the '94 Massachusetts senate race as an example) that this "version" of him running for president is just that, a version. He calls himself a "lifelong hunter," but he's only been twice; once when he was a little boy (eleven, I believe) and once this past summer. He's also a "Lifelong" member of the NRA, which he joined last August. He also doesn't have exactly the kind of experience that Republican primary voters are looking for. P.J. O'Rourke, a Republican commentator and comedian (who has said he wanted to like Romney), described it well when he said that Romney running for President as a Republican was akin to someone running for Pope with credentials as chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Massachusetts, that bluest of blue states, has not proven to be a good stepping stone for anyone to the Presidency, Democrat or Republican. And it may just be a little bit suspicious to voters that in the past year or so, Romney has gone from pro-choice to pro-life, turned against gay marriage, and gone hard to the right on many other issues. All this after he does not need to win re-election in Massachusetts. Hmmmm.....

If Romney 4.0 gets the support of the general Republican population, and Romney 4.6 proceeds to win the general election, who is to say what Romney 5.0 will do once in office? Before that happens though, Republicans could get a taste of their own "flip-flopping" remarks in the general election.

McCain is a true campaign-finance reformer, and he does not like to raise money. He genuinely thinks it should be out of the system. Let's not punish him for not getting as cozy with the special interests as Romney 4.0 or Giuliani. He deserves votes for his integrity.

Thank you for reading.

Records

Lest this blog become a stump for Obama and Obama alone, I will have to cover a wider variety of Democratic nominee types in the future.

Today is not the future.

Today I will bask in the glory of the knowledge that Obama has raised a cool $25 million, just a million shy of the $26 that Hillary has managed to scrub up for her campaign (both are records for fundraising). Clinton's support has been slipping by leaps and bounds here in the Granite State, while Obama's has gradually been growing as New Hampshirites learn more about this fresh new face. Of course, John Edwards has jumped to second place in support, garnering a 21% fanbase. However, when primary day rolls around, I feel confident that voters will remember the Kerry/Edwards' campaign's lack of confidence and strength, and make the choice for the right candidate. We can only hope that the voters's realization comes on the day of the primary, and not the actual election.

Obama all the way!