But that's the URL!

(Sorry about the language.) This. Fucking. Election.

Regarding Edwards

I'm profoundly disappointed. But I'd like mention something, and maybe if there's a politician out there, I might get him or her to think about it for a moment.

Yeah, I'm disappointed in John Edwards because he cheated on his wife, but really that's his wife's problem and not mine. And I'm disappointed again to see the uneven press coverage, holding some people more accountable than others (someone during the commentary last night asked how John Edwards could even consider running for president after doing something like that -- but I've never heard anyone question how John McCain could run for president after all his philandering and bigamy).

But here's something I've never heard people mention: there are a lot of people out here in the trenches who put our hearts, souls, money, blood, sweat and tears into these campaigns, and to betray the work that we do is a hurtful insult. I took a day out of my life to shuttle John Edwards around town and spent a weekend putting up his campaign workers (all of which was fun, but that's beside the point). I have a friend who traveled -- at his own expense -- to Iowa to work for the Edwards campaign before the first primaries. Was Edwards really all that aware of our contributions? Apparently not.

And it's not just Edwards, of course. I know a lot of people here in Chattanooga who busted their asses to get Billy Long elected sheriff. And how did he show his appreciation? Twenty-seven crimes.

John Edwards said with regard to his infidelity, "... becoming a national public figure, all of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you're invincible and there will be no consequences."

Perhaps if he had taken a look around once in a while, at all the good people who were helping him up, he might have realized that he didn't get where he was all alone. Then perhaps he wouldn't have felt so much like superman.

Another Link List

• This is not good news for the beef industry. The Bush administration wants to stop all this crazy testing for mad cow disease! They're afraid the consumer might be freaked out by too much information. Seriously. But you're not still eating that hormone-laden, untested, corn-fed, antibiotic-charged, E. coli-tainted beef from the big cattle companies anyway, are you? Me neither (via Ice Station Tango).
• Oy. Tennessee's addled legislature has apparently decided to illustrate the principle of entropy. Sigh.
• For anyone bothered by the suggestion that their hard-earned contributions to the Obama campaign might end up being used to pay off the debts of a woman who's worth tens of millions of dollars, relax -- it doesn't work that way.
• Like many of this year's Congressional Republicans, Liddy Dole is in deep trouble in North Carolina. Oh, well.
• Jenna Bush got married yesterday, and guess who performed the ceremony?The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at the ceremony. Mr. Caldwell, a longtime religious adviser to Mr. Bush, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama.
  Of course, Jenna might be supporting Barack Obama as well.
• What is Half in Ten? Well, this is the way the Station Agent puts it: John Edwards moves his campaign against poverty forward by creating Half in Ten. The idea is to cut poverty in half in ten years, which is a truly ambitious goal considering Bush is trying to double poverty within the next five or six hours.
• And finally, via A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, I found the trailer to Hamlet 2, which is due to hit theaters at the end of August. It could be hilarious or it be so over-the-top that it misses the mark, but the bit here made me laugh.

Health Care

A committee of the Senate is meeting today to discuss health care in America. Elizabeth Edwards, who is living with cancer, is speaking before that group right now. I'm not sure what the point of the hearing is, since the Republicans have made it clear that no major changes to the US health care policy will take place under their watch, but I'd like to share a few links here -- a little food for thought.

The current American approach to heath care policy can be summed up with this: don't get sick! Many people -- even educated, employed, comfortably middle class people -- don't find out until they get sick that they are underinsured.

Further, many people in the United States are slaves to their health insurance. I have a friend whose every career decision has been influenced by her Type I diabetes -- the jobs she has taken weren't always her top choices, but rather the ones with the good health coverage. And if you stop to think about it for even a moment, our system of dispensing health coverage through employers is incredibly bizarre. The quality of your health insurance depends on the ability of some middle management suit you've never even met to negotiate with the insurance companies? And since the insurance company is a for-profit business and that middle management suit has to answer to his cost-conscious superiors, what do you think are the chances that your insurance package will be as good as the deal the guys in Congress are getting? It's a system that just doesn't make any sense.

And finally, if you think that we don't have socialized medicine here in the United States, think again. What we do have is the most expensive, inefficient and stupid system of socialized medicine imaginable, but ultimately, the people do eventually pick up the tab when the uninsured, underinsured -- or even insured -- need help.

In the third day of county budget hearings, Erlanger CEO Jim Brexler asked the commission for $500,000 more than the $3 million the hospital has received each of the last three years. [...] Erlanger will pay around $10 million more this year for uncompensated care than it did last year.

Check out this recent story from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, about a young man who had an accident while he was covered by health insurance.

T.J. is covered by his mother's insurance policy, United Healthcare...

Unfortunately for T.J. and his family, having health insurance quite often is not enough.

He speaks slowly and in fragments, and he has relearned how to eat and hold his head up. But his progress toward walking again has stalled: He's waiting to find out whether his insurance will cover more physical therapy.

(By the way, do you think Stephen Hemsley, the CEO of United Health, will ever have to face these kinds of problems?)

Bankrupted by their share of $700,000 worth of medical bills, the Johnsons were forced to sell their home in Soddy-Daisy when they couldn't make the payments to avoid foreclosure.

And even with all that, they're still needing help from the public.

Siskin is not in the network, so it received less reimbursement for T.J.'s therapy, said Siskin spokeswoman Teresa Dinger. At this point, Siskin has absorbed about $30,000 in costs for T.J.'s services and can't afford to absorb more, she said.

Amy Denton, a caseworker at Home Health Care of East Tennessee, said she has some leads on other options for the family and is working with a TennCare caseworker to figure out what the state's managed Medicaid program should cover for T.J., who qualifies for TennCare as secondary insurance. Ms. Denton said TennCare will cover services at an in-network rehab hospital if United denies the visits.

In the meantime, T.J. goes to school at Central High School for an hour a day and has speech therapy there twice a week. TennCare is paying for a certified nursing assistant to stay with T.J. eight hours a day, five days a week.

They're still waiting for van modifications that would accommodate the power wheelchair provided by TennCare, but that's unavailable until T.J.'s vocational rehabilitation coverage kicks in, which won't happen until he graduates and figures out what kind of work to do, said Tennessee Department of Human Services spokeswoman Michelle Mowery Johnson.

Think about that. Do you have any idea how well insured you are? You maybe have insurance, but how much will that cover if you have an accident or a major medical problem? Are you ready to trade your house for medical care? What will you do for insurance if you lose your job? What if you become disabled and can't work?

There is a health care crisis in this country, and it's not just about providing care for the poor. This county spends, per capita, more money on health care than any other nation on earth, and yet the quality of our health care is not even close to making the top of any list. Compared to the people in many European countries, we don't live as long, more of our babies die in infancy, and we're continuing to lose ground. We're fat, hyperglycemic, an accident waiting to happen -- and unless we're named McCain, Cheney or Clinton, we don't necessarily have access to decent health care.

It's something to ponder over -- especially as November approaches. And in the meantime, whatever you do, don't get sick!

Dems Do Colbert

Thursday night, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all appeared on the Colbert Report. It took us back to the heyday of the primary campaign -- before things got ugly and boring. To see the clips from the show, go here (edWØRDS was my favorite segment). And if you'll forgive me a bit of photoshopping, I loved this campaign when it was a three-man race. Now -- enh -- not so much...

Edwards Endorsement: Once Step Closer

Edwards and Obama have met.

Monday Tidbits

It's pretty quiet out there. Everyone's waiting for the big DC area races tomorrow. A few things are floating around, though:

Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, has died after a short battle with cancer.

The meeting between John Edwards and Barack Obama that was supposed to happen today in North Carolina has been postponed. Apparently, there was a scheduling conflict (or maybe it's that the media attention was getting too intense).

Today's endorsements: Paul Weyrich for Huckabee and Gary Bauer for McCain.

Oh, and here's a person with a rich fantasy life!

Never a Dull Day!

The results are just starting to come in from the Maine caucuses, but in the meantime, there's big news from the Clinton campaign:

Patti Solis Doyle announced that she is stepping down as the campaign manager for the presidential campaign of Sen. Hilary Clinton...

This is a pretty huge news, coming in the middle of a very competitive series of primaries, and especially since it's on the heels of the revelation that Clinton has had to dig into her own pockets in an attempt to keep up with Obama's fundraising. Could this resignation be because of recent missteps, like Clinton's Hallmark Channel Town Hall, the way the campaign has been sowing division among democrats, or their threats to take the Democratic Party down with them if she doesn't win?

However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What's more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

There's also news on the Edwards front. He has apparently met with Clinton, and is set to meet with Obama tomorrow. Perhaps an endorsement is forthcoming?

	Democrat	Republican
Sunday Feb 10	Maine	(no contest today)
	Obama 59% Clinton 41%	-

(UPDATE:) This is a big upset for Obama, as the expectation was that Clinton would have a pretty easy win in Maine.

Tomorrow, Obama

You all have been getting my endorsement of Obama as a slow leak in the past week, so I'm only going to say a few words here to encourage you to get out and support him if you are in a state that caucuses or has a primary tomorrow.

I think Barack Obama has the potential to be a great leader and has already proven that where many politicians use our divisions against us, Obama finds ways to bring us together. He's a brilliant man (and was right on the war), and is capable of surrounding himself with talented people and when it comes to electability, Obama is simply our best candidate.

But you've been hearing me go on about this stuff for a while. So I figure you might like to hear from some of the other people who have endorsed Obama -- in their own words, when I could find a good link (I'll be updating links for recent endorsers as they become available). To see a more complete list of Obama endorsements, click here.

Joe Lance
Caroline Kennedy
Susan Eisenhower
Senator Ted Kennedy
John Kerry (and Teresa)
Maria Shriver
Tricia Moseley (former Strom staffer)
moveon.org
DeadHeads
Oprah
Stevie Wonder
Joan Baez
Hulk Hogan
Robert DeNiro
Garrison Keillor
Toni Morrison
DHinMI

And then, of course, there are the Obamicans (like Susan Eisenhower and Tricia Moseley):

Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, who anchors MSNBC's "Morning Joe," says many conservative friends—including Bush officials and evangelical Christians—sent him enthusiastic e-mails after seeing Obama's post-election speeches in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. "He doesn't attack Republicans, he doesn't attack whites and he never seems to draw these dividing lines that Bill Clinton [does]," Scarborough told NEWSWEEK.

We're still waiting to hear from John Edwards and Al Gore, but the links I found suggest that they probably won't speak out until after tomorrow...

UPDATE: more here!

A Nice Tribute

I just ran across this on Barack Obama's website.

Oh, no! Edwards out!

This is terrible.

I really hoped that he would stay in the race for the distance.

And after Billary's performance last night,* there's no point in trying to pretend to be a neutral, loving-all-the-candidates kind of Democrat (and this does make next week's decision much easier a no-brainer), so...

Go, OBAMA!

*Let's use a baseball analogy. Hillary, a baseball player, agreed with the other players to skip a game, and then ran the bases on an empty field and claimed a great victory. It is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen. And it is just the kind of divisiveness we are trying to get away from in Washington!

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Florida, again.

* John McCain 36%
* Mitt Romney 31%
* Rudy Giuliani 15%
* Mike Huckabee 13%
* Ron Paul 3%

* Hillary Clinton 50%
* Barack Obama 33%
* John Edwards 14%

This is another weird year in Florida. The Republicans are only getting half their delegates, and the Democrats get none.

The Dem candidates all agreed ahead of time not to campaign in Florida after the Florida Democratic Party stripped the party of all their delegates as punishment for having an early primary (the same thing happened in Michigan). Clinton is the only candidate who pursued votes in Florida, although technically, she did not campaign there. The blogosphere is responding with both praise and ire (will this issue split the party?), and I'm sure we're just at the very beginning of this story.

On the Republican side, I think this was a very decisive victory for McCain. Not only did he get a good five points on Romney, but he also got the endorsement of Giuliani (as he cuts his losses, preserves his speaking fee rates, and finally bows out of the race).

National Coverage of Chattanooga Rally

MSNBC actually has a Chattanooga byline today, with coverage of John Edwards's criticism of Bush's economic stimulus plan while making remarks during a visit to town (the Republicans responded with some feeble sputtering and a tired old red herring).

CBS came close, but gave the byline to Nashville.

I'm not sure if the other national outfits have responded, but if I find more, I'll update (feel free to clue me in!)...

My Weekend with the Edwards Campaign

Well, I've been pretty quiet for the past several days, but I have a good excuse: I was swept up in the preparations for today's visit from John Edwards. We didn't even know he was coming until Friday afternoon. There was a lot of do to get ready, and a few locals and campaign staffers really pulled out all the stops and put on an amazing rally. My role was quite small in the grand scheme of things, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and over the course of a few days, I got a peak into the real grind of a national campaign.

Edwards at the IBEW

Here's raw video of the John Edwards visit to Chattanooga today:

The crowd waits
Edwards arrives
Speech, part 1
Speech, part 2
Speech, part 3
Edwards departs

The crowd, as you can see, is huge. People were packed in like sardines and overflowed into the hallways.

SC Results!

Well I'm sure you've already heard the results from South Carolina -- they called it for Obama as soon as the polls were closed, based on the exit data. And, the margin is pretty huge:

Barack Obama (54%)
Hillary Clinton (27%)
John Edwards (19%)

And here are some interesting numbers, courtesy of AmericaBlog:

Black voters: 81% Obama, 18% Clinton, 1% Edwards
White voters: 39% Edwards, 36% Hillary, 24% Obama
Black men: 80% Obama, 17% Clinton, 3% Edwards
Black women: 82% Obama, 17% Clinton
White men: 44% Edwards, 28% Clinton, 27% Obama
White women: 42% Clinton, 35% Edwards, 22% Obama

Futher, there's more to be found in those exit polls:

Fifty-six percent of those voting so far think Obama attacked Clinton unfairly, and while that is a high number, more people thought Clinton unfairly attacked Obama -- 70%.

The Clintons have been accused of playing the race card in this contest. We do see some potential fallout for the Clintons in the African-American community: 74% of African-American voters think that Clinton unfairly attacked Obama. But when we look at the same question among white voters, a comparable number thought Clinton unfairly attacked Obama -- 68%.

Also worth mentioning, a majority of the voters -- 56% -- said that Bill Clinton's campaigning was important to their vote today.

SC Tomorrow!

I'm still really torn in terms of who I might vote for when I finally have a chance to weigh in on February 5th. The Big Dog's snarling and sniping has put me off of casting a vote for Billary, but I honestly don't know if I will cast my ballot for Obama or Edwards.

On one hand, I'm tempted to support Obama (who would make a great president) just to spite the Clintons' efforts to make this race about race. I'm disgusted that Bill would go there, and do this to our party. If I were voting in South Carolina tomorrow, I'd probably vote for Obama, just to keep this from being a black voter vs. white voter thing.

On the other hand, Edwards is a good candidate in his own right (Trish made a case for Edwards after casting an early ballot in the Florida race). But beyond that, I think it's good for him to stay in the race and the longer he's a legitimate candidate, the better. He keeps the debate interesting (as soon as this becomes a Obama/Clinton battle, it's going to degenerate), but beyond that, if he's collecting delegates, he could keep either Clinton or Obama from getting the majority needed to be crowned the nominee before the convention. If this thing goes to a brokered convention, anything could happen (including the return of Al Gore, untouched by primary nastiness).

Obviously, a lot can still happen before Tennessee's primary in February 5th (this is why I won't vote early this time around), and I don't have to decide right now who will get my vote, but with two big races coming up in the next several days, it gets me to wondering what I'd do. And I'm certainly happy to have more than one great candidate tempting me in the primary! The tracking polls are all over the place, so there's no predicting what the outcome will be. It's going to be a fun week!

Edwards in Chattanooga on Monday!

John Edwards will be at IBEW Local 175 on Monday Jan. 28, 2008 at 11:15 AM!

No kidding!

UPDATE: coverage from the Chattanoogan!

3 Days to SC

The latest poll (conducted Monday) is putting Obama at 44, Clinton at 28, and Edwards at 15. It'll be interesting to see how much that moves before Saturday. So far, Obama and Edwards have been moving up while Clinton has been heading down (are you paying attention, Bill?). I hope Edwards does hit at least 15% -- the longer he stays in the race, the better for the Dems, as he's recently provided the rational voice when tempers have begun to flare...