In other liberal-leaning blogs like VivirLatino, the overall marks of Hillary Clinton’s speech were terrific. For the most part, bloggers pointed out that the first woman to seriously contend for the President of the United States was wholehearted in her plea for party unity at the Pepsi Center during the second full night of the Democrat Convention in Denver, Colorado.

“I think she did what she had to in terms of uniting the party,” argues Darryl Wolk from Canada, who in the same breath follows with: “I still think she would have been the strongest choice for VP.”

This is the conundrum facing presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. As a political upstart who defeated the heavily funded and experienced political machine of Hillary Clinton, how will he keep control over the sometimes unwieldy Democratic party, whose complete support he needs to defeat Republican John McCain in November.

In what could be the biggest question of Election 2008, will Clinton’s supporters heed her call and support Obama in November? Inquiring bloggers want to know.

Let’s go to a story from Jotman in Thailand.

I had assumed Hillary supporters would “get over it,” but in the back of my mind was an incident in which I had been a participant.



While residing in the US, I became a member of a spontaneously assembled community group engaged in some emergency social activism. The stakes seemed high, our time limited. We assembled. Our group absolutely had to nominate two “speakers” to represent us at an upcoming town hall meeting.



One of the three people standing for nomination declared that “as a matter of principle,” one of our two representatives “must be a woman.” This woman had a large number of female supporters. The other two candidates — both male — vehemently disagreed. Gender absolutely should not be a criteria, they argued. To make a long story short, our activist group elected two representatives to attend the town hall — neither one was female.



The reason I bring up this story was what followed. Not only did the candidate who was not nominated quit our community activist group, but so did many of the women who had voted for her. That so many of our members had simply chosen quit the community group over the outcome of this one vote had surprised me.



Today, I can't help but wonder if a similar psychology is at play among Hillary Democrats.

In a somewhat similar vein, Israel’s Ms. Missive at Patriot Missive declares Clinton's speech didn’t heal divisions within the Democratic party:

Well, the way I see it is Hillary still has a vagina and Barack still has a penis. So, how is it a shock that Hillary loyalists still aren’t voting for Barack?

Perhaps not every Barack- and Hillary-ologist were viewing Clinton’s speech through the lens of gender (or sexual organs), but many political were deconstructing her words more closely than a group of literature grad students scrutinizing the latest David Foster Wallace tome.

Bluegrass Boabab, a South African with a wonderful nom de plume who now lives in the U.S. and writes theIn the Shadow of the Baobab blog claims that Hillary Clinton delivered her finest speech ever, a performance of her lifetime. However, the address was “about Hilary Clinton and her piece of women’s rights history she carved herself because of how close she got to be the nominee…as a woman, and rightly so too.”

Continuing:

Sometimes it sounded as if Obama was mostly treated like a tag on to her, but in a very nice and diplomatic and supportive fashion, so well that it got the people to their feet every time. She did what she had to do and said what she had to say in support of Obama. She said Michelle will be a good first lady, but never said why she thinks Obama would be a good president. A true endorser usually does. I am sure many thought that that was suppose to be her job tonight. Unite the party behind Obama. I don’t think the speech did though.

…I felt it was not an “Arrivederci Roma” speech. It was a “I’ll be back!” speech! A question of when? Maybe if Obama loses she could run again in 2012.

SnoopyTheGoon at Simply Jews points out that Clinton may have uttered the words “Obama is my candidate,” but:

She didn't specify what exactly it is she plans for him.

Just below, Dick Stanely comments that perhaps: “She's getting ready for next time, when she can run against McCain for his second term.”

There’s no mistaking that some continue to hold onto the idea that Obama-Clinton would represent a Democrat “dream ticket.” We can’t forget, however, the success the Obama campaign had in portraying Clinton as an old fashioned, tired Democrat. Here’s something in that vein from Richard Silverstein over at Tikun-Olam, writing after Joe Biden was introduced as Obama’s running mate. “One of the things I’ve admired about Obama’s campaign thus far has been his willingness to make daring moves, to do the unexpected,” he says early in his argument against the Biden choice. “It allowed him to break out of the mold. It set him apart from Hillary Clinton, the candidate who seemingly tried to do everything the same old, boring, old-fashioned way.”

The question remains what assets Hillary (or husband Bill) Clinton will bring to the Democratic party in the upcoming months. It’s a similar question that could be asked of a certain royal bloodline in the Republican Party. From Labor View From Bayside, based in Australia:

Is George W. Bush or the Clintons the greater anchor to be dragging into November? The next couple of months will be stormy for both of them, with or without the mixed metaphors.

Defying conventional wisdom?

August 29 will mark the three-year anniversary of a hurricane that killed thousands of lives in Southern U.S. and left thousands more in extreme poverty. Both presidential nominees Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama made stops during their campaign and paid visits to the area most affected by Katrina: New Orleans. During their visits, three bloggers paid close attention and formed opinions.

Benito García Pedraza of Madrid, Spain, wrote in his blog the comments that McCain said during his tour earlier this year.

“ ‘We need to go back to have a conversation about what to do [about Ward 9 in New Orleans]: rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is.’ That was John McCain’s statement when he toured hurricane-damaged New Orleans recently. Three days later, the Senator said he didn’t remember saying that.”

Pedraza further notes that McCain didn’t support many of the relief efforts recommended for those affected by Katrina.

“I wonder if Sen. McCain has also forgotten his voting record on Hurricane Katrina, a record that suggests that he was part of the problem, not part of the solution. I trust Gulf Coast voters won’t forget. During his recent tour, Sen. McCain criticized both the Bush Administration and Congress for its handling of the disaster. Lamenting the pace of recovery, Sen. McCain said, ‘I want to assure you it will never happen again in this country. You have my commitment and my promise.’ But Sen. McCain voted against establishing a Congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local responses to Katrina in September 2005. He repeated that vote in 2006. He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief.”

On the other side of the world, in Australia, Rossi the Aussie writes in her shared blog ReBelled Nation, about McCain’s many homes compared to those who were forced into foreclosure. She further examines where McCain was when Katrina paid America’s South a visit, by simply posting a picture of McCain and Bush having cake. On the bottom of the picture, lies the question:

“Where were you on August 29, 2005?”

Meanwhile, Ricardo Valenzuela of Mexico (like many other bloggers) doesn’t question where Obama was during Hurricane Katrina or his support of federal aid to those that needed it. But, he questions, in his blog Intermex Power, whether Obama and the Democratic Party will be able to successfully win the election, as many Americans (even some Democrats) doubt his abilities and if he does become president, will he be able to fully emphasize with the low and middle-class Americans?

Valenzuela ends his post saying:

“That [empathizing with low and middle-class Americans] could also help heal the wounds of the Democratic Party, which, after the bitter contest and Mr. Obama’s narrow victory, are still raw. If the Democrats remain divided they will lose the presidency. Were that to happen, after Iraq, Katrina and an economic crisis, they might well want to consider an alternative line of work.”

Bloggers of all stripes have moved passed their initial gut reactions on the freshly minted Democratic ticket and have started to formulate more solid opinions based on fact. That’s what covering politics is all about, isn’t it?

“On the surface, Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate strikes me as pretty uninspired,” writes Tim Dunlop from Australia. “It’s hard to imagine that it wins him an extra vote come November, though I think that sometimes the ability of a running mate to do that for any candidate is overstated.”

He continues:

Not that I think Biden is a bad choice per se; in fact, I don’t really think there is anyone better from the list of those whose names cropped up over the last few months. I certainly don’t think Hillary was ever a serious option. He is a fairly personable guy, even if he, rightly, has a reputation for talking to much. He is a regular on US political programs and has developed a solid presence in that medium, a bit of go-to guy for the cable shows looking for an articulate criticism of Bush policy.

Does “articulate critic of Bush policy” translate into “attack dog”? For Sultan Knish and the stories behind the news from Israel, that answer is an emphatic yes. However, there is one caveat.

One interpretation is that Biden is there to launch the dirty attacks on McCain that Obama doesn't want to dirty himself with. This is plausible considering that Obama's dirty campaigns have been fought by lawyers, people who worked for his campaign… But considering that Biden turned a simple question about what law school he went to into an extended rant about how high his IQ is, setting him loose as an attack dog is a plan that's right up there with sending a pyromaniac to light a torch.

I'm sure that Biden will serve as an attack dog, I'm also sure that he'll do most of the damage to his own side, delivering verbal broadsides that roll like grenades back into Obama's tent.

With Obama’s choice, the Jewish blogger DovBear wonders where the hope mantra went:

I don't see how you can talk credibly about change, and youth, and so forth when your running mate is a grizzled, old career Washington insider…

Then there is the experience gap. Does highlighting Biden’s three decades of Senate experience call attention to Obama’s inexperience? Batya from Shiloh Musings in Israel points out filling the VP spot with an experienced poltico appears to be a pattern in American politics when the lead role goes to a newcomer.

• John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
• Bush and Cheney

Those two quickly came to mind.

I just wonder if anyone really believed that Obama would get the nomination so easily. The man really has no experience, no track record. Sort of frightening.

Then there are Biden's scandals and gaffes: His plagarism, his missed votes in the Senate, the famous foot-in-mouth disease. “So to recap,” opinesNorth Coast Voices in Australia. “Joe Biden is your typical candidate.”


He massages his personal history by ‘borrowing' the words and personal anecdotes of another, where possible avoids mentioning the real extent of his income, rewrites political history, turns up in the Senate when he wants to and generally tries to throw his weight around.

In other words - a 26-year political job horse who now relies on a wing and a prayer to get by in the U.S. Congress.
Definitely not the statesman with sound judgment praised by Obama in Springfield - more like the usual pitcher of warm spit.

A choice which offers little hope of change to the rest of the world.

But let’s leave Biden the man, or Biden the politician on the stump for a moment, and investigate where Biden has made his name: foreign policy. In this category we have a passel of posts that could easily be titled: Joe, what have you done for me lately?

From Erkan’s Field Diary, Biden may well bring an anti-Turkey stance to the White House.

An anti-Turkish vice president according to Hürriyet. He is known to defend Armenian, Greek, Cyprus lobby theses. But Foreign Policy experts state that Turkey is already changing is foreign policy attitudes and there won't much new tension btw Turkey and US….

Biden is also a “prime Serb hater and Albanian Muslim lobbyist” for sponsoring the 1999 resolution for the U.S. to bomb Serbia and, later, recognizing the Kosovo State, according to this 2007 post from Byzantine Blog that was recently reprinted in the German blog Allah’s Willing Executioners.

Iraq Pundit worries about Biden’s and Obama’s “total disregard for the Iraqi people.”

All along, Biden has made it clear that he sees Iraqis as nothing more than savages bent on killing one another. His solution is to divide the country to stop the beasts from murdering the other beasts. He can argue all he wants that President Bush and John McCain are not nearly as smart as Biden is, but at least they will not abandon the Iraqis.

A “100% Palestinian” blogger writing in Sabbah Blog, claims that Israel must be happy with Obama’s pick.

The guy (Obama) is ignorant and naive when it comes to cases such as Israeli occupation of Palestine. And now he picks a guy who proudly says “I’m a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist!” So, what are you expecting from Obama if he’s in office? (not that the other puppet is better).

Joe Biden chairs the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, a post that Obama hopes will compensate for his own lack of experience in the global realm. Obama “safe choice” will also help him win the most important part of all USA elections, AIPAC support - the Zionist Lobby.

One good piece of news coming out of the choice of Biden: He is big fan of the Amtrak train line, Dove’s Eye View informs us. For those who have tried to ride the rails in the U.S., that is not a bad thing at all.

Tim Dunlop

Monday, August 25

On the surface, Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate strikes me as pretty uninspired. It’s hard to imagine that it wins him an extra vote come November, though I think that sometimes the ability of a running mate to do that for any candidate is overstated. Biden’s obvious strengths as a politician—his foreign policy knowledge, his experience in DC—serves to plug some holes in Obama’s resume, in the same way Dick Cheney did for George W. Bush, but in so doing, they also draw attention to those holes. In particular, Biden’s inside-the-Beltway credentials as a long-serving Senator seems a funny trait for a candidate running on the promise of change from business-as-usual Washington politics to value. It’s one thing to try and bust out of that mould of being a captive of “Washington interests”; it’s another to acknowledge via your YP choice that, in fact, some ability to work within that system is a good thing.

Not that I think Biden is a bad choice per se; in fact, I don’t really think there is anyone better from the list of those whose names cropped up over the last few months. I certainly don’t think Hillary was ever a serious option. He is a fairly personable guy, even if he, rightly, has a reputation for talking to much. He is a regular on US political programs and has developed a solid presence in that medium, a bit of go-to guy for the cable shows looking for an articulate criticism of Bush policy. And I guess, Obama, again like Bush, was wise to pick someone who looks like a safe choice in fulfilling in the only main constitutional role a VP has: to step into the breach in the event a President dies in office. Still, I’m pretty much a half-glass-empty empty person on the matter.

Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan offers the glass-half-full version:

I’d say it suggests a serious, adult attitude toward the enormous burden that the next presidency will be, especially in foreign policy.

We’ve learned how disastrous a vice-president can be, in the current administration. No vice-president in American history has done as much damage to national security, constitutional integrity and the moral standing of the United States as Dick Cheney. Biden has aspects of the Cheney pick - he’s older, more seasoned and more adept at foreign policy than Obama. But no one imagines that Obama would delegate - and all but abdicate - critical decisions to Biden the way Bush has to Cheney.

Nonetheless, it seems obvious that Biden speaks his mind frankly, and would have real heft and independence in the office. He knows enough that foreign leaders call him in international crises. That reassures me, as we face some grim days in the coming years in the war on terror.

This strikes me, in other words, as a pick for a candidate who is already very serious about governing - and making calls that forgo a campaign buzz for the sake of the country if he wins. Putting country first, you might say. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Anyway, onto the conventions, McCain’s choice, and—finally!—the home stretch for this longest of long campaigns.

The speech played heavily on his supposed hard work in the U.S. Senate since 1972 and his modest financial circumstances.

Well it seems that Biden (along with Obama and McCain) does not have an enviable record in the Senate.
During the current Congress he has missed 193 votes or 30% of all occasions on which he could have voted.
That makes him the fifth highest scoring senator on the current missed votes list.

The Washington Post has a list of all missed votes since he entered the Senate here.

As for his income, on his Senate webpage Biden admits to: $165,200 Senate salary and $20,500 from teaching. In a 2005 ranking of the 100 senators for wealth, he was 99th.

Interestingly he doesn't mention extra monies received for sitting on numerous Senate committees and we don't know whether that book deal brought home the bacon.
While his 2006 Senate financial disclosure report available online shows that he also has a personal investment portfolio, a pension plan and his wife draws a teaching salary.

Senator Biden unsuccessfully stood for Democratic pre-selection in the 2007 presidential race and withdrew from the 1998 race when it was reported that he had plagiarised a number of speeches, including a speech by U.K. Labor Party leader, Neil McKinnock.

According to Famous Plagarists:
Joe Biden’s history of plagiarism and “stressless scholarship” gave plenty of ammo to his enemies, one of them choosing to circulate a so-called “attack video” to demonstrate Biden’s outright plagiarism of a British politician’s speech. But this appropriation from Neal Kinnock was not the first occurrence of unacknowledged lifting by the senator from Delaware. In 1965 Biden plagiarized while writing a paper as a student at the Syracuse University Law School in a legal methods course which he failed because of that copied paper.

The senator also came to public attention for his behaviour during the Thomas-Hill hearings.

National Review online reports that Biden is also quite famous for being a lifelong sufferer of foot-in-mouth disease:
According to The New Republic, in October 2001, Biden encountered a group of airline pilots and flight attendants who wanted his help in passing emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. “I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you,” Biden told them. “If not, I will screw you badly.”

A list of his classic political slips here.

So to recap. Joe Biden is your typical candidate.
He massages his personal history by ‘borrowing' the words and personal anecdotes of another, where possible avoids mentioning the real extent of his income, rewrites politcal history, turns up in the Senate when he wants to and generally tries to throw his weight around.

In other words - a 26-year political job horse who now relies on a wing and a prayer to get by in the U.S. Congress.
Definitely not the statesman with sound judgment praised by Obama in Springfield - more like the usual pitcher of warm spit.

A choice which offers little hope of change to the rest of the world.

Posted by CLARENCEGIRL

Rakoto's Rants (a Malagasy blogger living in the U.S.) draws comparisons between the United States and his home country:

Scandinavian nations are at the top of the list which does not include any African nations.
in Madagascar, traditional beliefs, Christianity (45%) and Islam (7%) account for 99% of the population. A Council regrouping the principal Churches of Madagascar (FFKM) has been historically very involved into the political life of Madagascar.

Yet, there were more openly “secular”presidents in Madagascar's history that in the US history (Thomas Jefferson being the only known atheist American president).

He then ponders the correlation between the open show of faith and electability:

So again, why is openly showing its faith a sine qua non for “electability” ? And how does one correlate the candidates' faiths with the ability to govern a country ?

I imagine there are no quick easy answer to that question although I assume that the history of the founding fathers escaping religious persecution has got to be a factor.

Please understand that those questions are born from the desire to comprehend the decision-making process of the common elector during the elections from an outsider's perspective.

Blogger Bush Out is surprised that the majority of voters would sooner vote for a Jew or a woman than an atheist:

Atrios links to these Gallup results. It's pretty sad that 11% of US voters would not even consider voting for a woman. But the really scary stat is that a majority of US voters would never vote for an atheist.

Also interesting that 92% would vote for a Jew, but the question of voting for a Muslim was not even asked!

A commenter, Bukko_in_Australia, demonstrates one side of U.S. opinion:

One of the things on TV that embarrasses me most about my countrymen, aside from the clowns on Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil and Judge Judy, are their constant references to God and prayer. Makes Yanks sound like a bunch of gibbering superstitious Third-Worlders.

eat lard, in a post entitled “The Atheist Manifesto,” discusses how atheists are regularly relegated to the category of those with no belief structure or morals:

In the great Democrat litmus test recently Senators Obama and Clinton showed that both a Woman and Black was conceivable and realistic as a choice of the people’ Chief Executive. But polling numbers above have ruled out a non-religious President of the United States. It’s not surprising therefore that ‘Shares our Values’ is a consistent and accurate measure of a voter’s personal preference for a candidate.

Despite the popular idea that values must be religious, I ask you, is it hard to imagine that atheists have values and make conscious choices to live by them? That our values should differ, like our belief structures do but that they stem from choice, experience and commonsense is so hard to imagine?

Daniel Cuevas, a Puerto-Rican blogger writing for WeOp-Ed, discusses the Latino vote as it relates to the spectrum of religion:

At the risk of using sweeping generalizations, I don't think that most people would doubt that blacks and Latinos are people of faith. Latinos pray almost as many times a day as Muslims, and blacks are the only people I know whose voice mail greetings are most likely to tell callers to have “a blessed day.” Like the Christian Right and the Republicans who pander to that voting bloc, Latinos and blacks invoke God into their personal lives on a daily basis, and not just when they take the Lord's name into vain, either.

Liberals, on the other hand, are widely regarded as being secular and atheist. Most white college professors are both liberal and secular to the point where they actually look down on people who believe in God. Most white liberals couldn't care less that the right wing segment of American media label them as Godless and blame them for everything from the overblown “war on Christmas” to an alleged opposition to school prayer…but Latinos care.

For more information on atheist voters in the United States, check out this post from an American atheist on which candidate is best, and this post on secular organizations which support Obama.

in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations