I know that many folks on this site may disagree with my suggestion in this diary, but I have to say it!  As an ardent Obama supporter, about the only thing that I have been dissapointed with the Senator with during this campaign has been the fact he has not really made that much of an effort to reach out to Appalachia.  Visiting Kentucky and West Virginia once or twice in the run up to each state's repspective primaries doesn't quite cut it in my opinion.  Even in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina, Obama didn't spend as much time in the Appalachian regions of these states as should have. This has to change now that the general election campaign is about to begin.

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I know that many folks on this site may disagree with my suggestion in this diary, but I have to say it!  As an ardent Obama supporter, about the only thing that I have been dissapointed with the Senator with during this campaign has been the fact he has not really made that much of an effort to reach out to Appalachia.  Visiting Kentucky and West Virginia once or twice in the run up to each state's repspective primaries doesn't quite cut it in my opinion.  This has to change between now and the general election, and here is why.

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As we all know, Barrack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee.  He has won more states, won more votes, and is far ahead in the delegate count.  Barring some sort of major setback far worse than the Jeremiah Wright scandal, this primary election is over.  However, we also know that Hillary Clinton is refusing to surrender, and according to all of the major polls, she is heading toward a lopsided forty point win in tonight's primary.  Although this result will not change who our eventual nominee is, depending on how the loss is spun, the loss could adversely affect his general election prospects if we allow the media to go forward with the meme that Obama is not in touch with "real, hardworking Americans."  It appears that CNN is already running with this story.  So how do we counter this line of attack!

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So as we know, Hillary continued the primary madness indefinetly with her big "double digit" win in Pennsylvania.  (at least it's double digits when you count the decimal points).  As a result we continue to beat up on each other rather than focusing on the real enemy, John McCain.  Each day that we continue down this path of self destruction, the odds of John McCain being our next President increase.  So what's my solution?  Let's run them both with Clinton being our nominee in the states that she has won, and Obama being our nominee in the states that he has won.  In short, let's follow the Whig strategy of 1836.

This past Friday night, I attended a Kansas concert in Greeneville, Tennessee.  In case you don't know who the band Kansas is, they are classic rock band whose biggest hit came in the 1970s and include "Dust in the Wind," "Carry on my Wayward Son," and "Point of No Return."  I had been asked to attend this concert by my father, who is close friends with the band's bass player, Billy Greer, who is from the same small town in East Tennessee that I am from.  I too am acquainted with Billy, and we have even played music together a time or two.

Anyway, I have been to several Kansas concerts over the years, I didn't realize that this was a benefit concert until my wife and I arrived at the show and read the program.  The concert was in fact a benefit for well renound, Grammy Award-winning guitarist, Barry Burton, who died recently after a long bout with leukemia.

First, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a rabid Barack Obama supporter who has been very unhappy with Hillary's behavior as of late.  With that said, I am still a staunch Democrat who will vote for our nominee regardless of whom that might be in November.  Most of us who frequent this site fall into that category.  Given the fact that John McCain would continue our current policy of endless war and further swing our Supreme Court to the right, the stakes are simply too high to even consider not voting for the Democratic nominee.  As someone whose primary concern is making sure that we win in November regardless of our nominee is, the thoughts of a bitterly contested primary continuing on through June and even possibly into the Democratic convention makes me cringe.  Remember 1968, 1972, and 1980?  We really don't want to go there.  So if I were in Howard Dean's shoes I would do the following:

As you all probably know, the swiftboating of Obama's campaign has already begun.  Republican news outlets are desparately trying to lend some creedence to demonstrably false rumours going around the internet that Obama is a Muslim American who refuses to swear in on the Bible or say the pledge of allegiance by claiming that he is not patriotic.  In order to support this contention, they have dug up a photo where Obama didn't put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.  They have also made a big deal about Obama not wearing a U.S. flag lapel pin.  So how does Obama counter these swiftboat style tactics?

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Over the past few decades, the right wing noise machine has made considerable hay out of pushing the false notion that liberals "hate America," while conservatives "love America."  The argument has gone something like this:  liberals are all pessimists who don't believe in the ingeniuty of the American people to solve problems without the help of government, while conservatives believe in the goodness of the American people; liberals blame America for all of the world's problems, while conservatives honor and revere America; yada yada yada.  They run on phony populism by railing against flag burning, denouncing "secular humanists," and exposing the "war on Christmas."  They play up hot buttons issue that divide the American public like abortion, gay marraige, and gun control.

So today, Jake Tapper wrote an article entitled "And Obama Wept" falsely claiming that Obama supporters are basically nothing more than a bunch of cult followers.  Here's a flavor of the bullshit spouted by Tapper in this "article:

It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

The article goes on to claim that Obama supporters are acting like cult members.  In support of this ridiculous claim, he quotes Joe Klien, who falsely claims that Obama's campaign has no substance " other than an amorphous desire for change.

Many have criticized our current frontloaded primary system for various reasons.  First, many ask why the citizens of New Hampshire and Iowa should get to have such a disproportionate influence over who gets to be our president.  Isn't this system unfair to the 99% of U.S. citizens who live in the other 48 states?  This criticism is further bolstered by the fact that New Hampshire and Iowa are hardly representative of the broad diversity of citizens that live in this nation.  In order to blunt this disproportionate influence, other states have moved their primaries or caucuses closer to New Hampshire.  The result is a system where the Presidential primaries of both parties will likely be decided on February 5th, and the citizens of states voting after this date will likely have very little influence on who wins the election.

As you all know, Markos has caused quite a stir with his call for Michigan Democrats to cross-over and vote for Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary as a Republican since there are no delegates at stake in the Democratic primary.  Apparently this has really pissed off some of the Republicans, some of whom have called the Michigan attorney general on Mr. Moulitsas.  In any event, these events have led me to question whether enough Democrats will cross over to make a difference.

Tonight it appears as though our elected Democratic Representatives are once again about to capitulate to the Bush crime family.  It is yet another sad, sad day for our nation.  Benjamin Franklin once said, "[t]hose who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  As I ponder this quote from one of our founding fathers, I can't help but wonder what in the world is wrong with our Democratic representatives?

Michael Moore's movie, Sicko, does an excellent job of making the case for single payer healthcare.  He covers almost all of the bases including the fact that we have 45 million uninsured Americans; the fact that other industrialized nations with single payer health care systems have higher life expentancies; and the fact that these other nations spend far less money per capita on health care than the U.S. even though they recieve care that is generally as good and in many cases better than the care that we recieve here at home.  However, one aspect of universal coverage through a single payer system that Michael Moore fails to discuss is the positive impact that such universal coverage would have on entrepreneurs and small business owners as well as our economy as a whole.

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Zoila Meyer has lived in this nation for nearly her entire life thinking she was a United States citizen. Her family moved to the Unites Stated from Cuba when she was one year old, and all her siblings are citizens as are her parents. Nevertheless, she is now in danger of being deported.

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As you know, Chuck Hagel is currently floating the possibility of running as an independent Presidential candidate.  The corporate media is portraying Hagel as a "maverick," the new John McCain if you will, and Sam Waterson's bunch at Unity 08 are giddy about the possibility that Hagel may be running on their ticket as a "centrist."

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No one would like to see George W. Bush removed from office more than I.  This President has committed numerous high crimes that would justify impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate.  This list of high crimes includes the fact that Bush intentionally lied to the American public about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in order to take us into a war that he was hell bent on prosecuting regardless of what the consequences would be.  As John W. Dean has pointed out, lying to the American public about intelligence in order to take us into a war based upon false pretenses could certainly be considered a violation of the federal anti-conspiracy statute.

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I know that everyone is concerned for good reason about our continued illegal occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq.  Other issues of critical importance such as the need for universal health care, the impending global warming crisis, and the demise of our middle class are all issues that have been discussed at length by each of the candidates and at this web site, and GOP victory in the 2008 Presidential election would severely damage our ability to deal with any of these issues in the near future.  However, I firmly believe that the scariest consequences associated with a GOP victory in the 2008 Presidential election would be those consequences that would result from new appointments to the Supreme Court.

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Lots of conservative pundits have tried to spin their defeat by claiming that many of the newly elected Democrats that are soon to take office on capital hill are conservatives, or that they at least ran as conservatives.  However, their claim is at best half correct.  While it may be true that many of our newly elected Democratic members of Congress are moderate to conservative on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, most of them are staunchly populist when it comes to economic issues.  Most of our newly elected members of Congress make no bones about differentiating themselves from the GOP on key issues such as unfair trade agreements, the minimum wage, the ever growing gap between the haves and have nots in this nation, and tax breaks for super rich corporate executives.

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