Things are looking good for Senator Obama's campaign for President of the United States. Obama's trending up in most early states as people are starting to pay attention to this campaign. The simple fact is the more they see, the more people like Barack Obama. That was before this past weekends barnburner events in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, that gave the better part of 100,000 people the chance to hear Barack speak. What will the effect of this weekend be, lets look at the event here in South Carolina.

     When the Obama campaign announced that talk show host Oprah Winfrey would be joining Barack Obama on the campaign trail some people wondered if she would be able to turn people out for Obama. I have to admit I'm curious if Oprah can have a real impact on this race by boosting turn out for the scheduled rallies, and if that will then  boost Obama turnout at the ballot box for Obama. Well this week when the campaign sold out an 18,000 seat arena, and then moved to an 80,000 seat stadium, the question of if Oprah would draw people was answered, yes.

The Tancredo campaign has just wheeled out it's silver bullet ad to try and get some attention.
Warning, it's bad.

It is no secret many of us are holding our hopes out that Al Gore will decide to run for president, myself included. But as I just got done watching Barack Obama on The Tonight Show, and he killed, my decision has at least been partially made, so I am going down to the campaign office here in Columbia tomorrow. But that may change should Al enter, but I'm done with hypotheticals and wishing.

I've been saying for a while now I think Obama will win the South carolina primary for two reasons.

1. The states dem primary voter bloc is about 50 percent african-american

2. We have an open primary where anyone can vote in either primary regardless of party affiliation.

Obama has incredible cross over appeal, and has been campaigning hard in area's of South Carolina often looked over by other Dem candidates.

You know there's alot of things wrong with our country.
The income gap, our reliance on fossil fuels, political parties that care more for their power (whether in majority or minority) than actually representing us, and this godforsaken war to name a few. But every once in a while I am reminded why this country is truly great.

On hardball just a minute ago John Edwards stated that if he had actionable inteligence on OBL location, and Musharef wouldn't act, he would. I believe the  phrase was something like "Osama bin Laden didn't attack Pakistan on 9-11, he attacked us, and I would go get him."
Thank You Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama.

The Senate is debating the Levin-Reed Amendment to the defense appropriations bill which requires redeployment of troops out of Iraq within 120 days of enactment.

Harry Reid has requested a standard simple majority vote on the Levin-Reed Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill.

The text of the amendment is here: S. 2766. (PDF)

The Republicans are filibustering and Harry Reid says that they have to actually debate in this filibuster rather than simply voting on cloture to quash the effort to get an up or down simple majority vote.

So thirty hours of debate is the order of the day, night and day again.

This is not political theater.  This is democracy, folks, and had we done this before we went into Iraq we might have avoided this fiasco.

As I watched Billo's little hit piece on DKos I was struck by something.
He was right, I am a hater.

I look at the world today and despair in, and for, our race. Hell there's alot of things that depress me about the world in 2007. Fair elections and media, global warming, energy solution supression (Yea fossil fuels, boo renewable energy) to name a few, I have more. The thing that depresses me the most is this god damned war!

Scrollin' around through the comments of Kos's diary and others has been interesting today to say the least. Seem's some people got their feelings hurt by the honestly truthful analysis of the field. If all you guys get so uptight about the mild opinions voiced about your (early) chosen candidate, wait a few months when the real noise machine gets rolling.

Seriously, how many gallons of gas do you burn in a week. It's 7 for me.

  It has been said, and I agree, that the most difference between our current war and Vietnam is the support for the men and women that have the god awful duty of serving in that godamned sand pit. In Vietnam our "media" want's us to think soldiers were ridiculed for serving but today most of America supports our troops, even if they oppose the war.

Like many other DKos users (don't consider myself a kossak yet) I find myself somewhat dis-content with our Democratic Primary field and think Al Gore should run.