Is Obama the Token character from South Park?

Is there a correlation between the States that Obama seems to win easily and those that he doesn't? Is it size, location, race, class?

Benji Krudwig,  a young student reporter at the University of Colorado, has an interesting take on it based on the work of Robert Putnam of Harvard University. In his book Bowling alone, Putname identified the loss of community that has spread across the US.

His research is based on comparison of communities that are homogeneous to ones that are racially diverse. And the results of the Democratic primaries, so far, support the conclusion that local diversity (or lack of it) might be the decisive factor in explaining how Democratic voters behave.

When someone runs for office and fails to address the most pressing needs of his own neighborhood or his own culture how can I trust that he has the empathy to understand some white upper middle class woman in the suburbs? Why do people like Oprah and Bill Cosby of all people have more insight into the issues of inner city youth and black men in America then either candidate? Why has the board become so "violent"?

  * At least a third of all homeless men are African-American.
   * African-Americans make up 12 percent of the general population, but they account for almost half of the prison population.
   * According to the U.S. Justice Department, 28 percent of black men born today will go to prison in their lifetimes.
   * Black youth are six times more likely to die of homicide than white youth and seven times more likely to commit a homicide.
   * Homicide is the leading cause of death among African-American males ages 15 to 29.

Last year nearly all of my friends got caught up in the "secret" helping drive the book to the number 1 position on the best seller list.. I wonder if Obama is the political version of the same phenomenon?

everyone would like to believe that there is a solution to their suffering — better yet, a solution that requires you only to think to receive it. The truth is that positive thinking (part of what The Secret promotes) is a valuable tool and has been known about and written about for well over a century but there is no evidence to back up the idea that thoughts alone can change the future.

In Politics is it enough to just hope for change in order to  bring it about??

Here in Washington State we have one of the oddest hybrid presidential elections in the country. It is a caucus or a primary? both? Why doesn't the  State tell people that the $10 million dollar primary on February 19th doesn't count for the Dems and only counts for half of the Rep delegates?

We are already receiving our ballots for the February 19th Presidential primary but it is only a symbolic vote for the Dems and the only way you can actually influence who will win in the state is to attend an hours and hours long caucus 10 days before that on February 9th. The Republicans aren't much better as they will use it to elect 19 of their 4o delegates to the GOP National Convention at a total cost of over half a million per delegate.

Ahh now it makes sense.. Bill Gates is retiring to be the next VP. I don't know how to cut and paste out of a video but if you go to this link at the six minute mark it shows him calling up Hillary, Barack and even Gore asking for a job.

Bill Gates for VP

All across the country public officials and legislatures are falling over themselves in an attempt to fund a new vaccines for girls as young as 9 to prevent 70% of the HPV viruses that leads to cervical cancer and 4,000 deaths a year. The drug has only been approved for less than a year, and

the data Merck presented to the FDA were based on some 21,000 test subjects between ages 16 and 26

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Why haven't any of the major news organizations reported tha the lead HPV researcher for Merck thinks that it is not only "silly" but that

"giving it to 11-year-olds is a great big public health experiment," said Diane M. Harper, who is a scientist, physician, professor and the director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.

Once again we appear to be fighting the last war. Politicians are falling over themselves in a vain attempt to get re-elected, failing to address the long-term economic costs of the war and failing to protect our strategic interests as they rush to protect themselves.

The real "battle" of this generation will be with China and not Terrorism but it doesn't appear to be on anyone's radar. Lets take a look at how China's commercial interests are developing into strategic ones in the Middle East by looking at their relationship with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

China with is burgeoning middle class and phenomenal internal growth rates has been a net importer of oil since 1993 and is not only looking to Iran, which has the fourth largest oil reserves and second-largest oil reserves, to quench its domestic thirst but also moving methodically and strategically to strengthen its position in the Middle East. Who has come repeatedly to the defense of Iran's nuclear ambitions and who is making any threat of sanctions a moot point? China.

Did your grandparents say anything new over the Turkey this year? Are the leaders of your company in their 60's and 70's with a bunch of VP's in their 20's?

I wonder who actually is going to be making policy now? Certainly the Senator's themselves don't have the time to draft laws so are a bunch of 20 something aides in charge?

Given the demographics here on KOS (the largest percentage of people are in their late 30's and 40's) and that the majority of corporate leaders are in their 50's isn't it odd that in government they are in their late 60's and 70's? (SEE BELOW THE FOLD FOR LEADERSHIP IN THE SENATE)

Tonight's Seattle Times has an article about a new online "game" called Fantasy Congress

WASHINGTON -- Imagine House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Republican Sen. Sam Brownback and Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton working together toward the same harmonious end.

Sound like fantasy?

Maybe, but that fantasy soon may be realized in a new Web site game that brings the concept of fantasy sports to the political arena.

Can environmentalists and evangelicals find common ground? The political stakes are fairly high with 3 out of 4 white evnagelicals voted for Bush. The show explores the landscape of American politics could be reshaped by a "serious split among conservative evangelicals over the environment and global warming."

Bills Moyers on PBS has an amazing show coming up on this topic along with a robust web site.

A new holy war is growing within the conservative evangelical community, with implications for both the global environment and American politics. For years liberal Christians and others have made protection of the environment a moral commitment. Now a number of conservative evangelicals are joining the fight, arguing that man's stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.

Not many people realize that suicide is the third leading cause of death amoung young adults between 15 and 24 and the fourth leading cause among those 25 to 44. Or that twice as many people are killed by suicide as homicide. Or that over 90,000 people a year are hospitilized for suicide attempts and up to 325,000 are treated in ER's each year.

One of my favorite former Senators (Welstone) sponsored a bill before he died to increase funding to the private non-profit crisis clinics and the Kristin Brooks Hope Center http://www.hopeline.com/ that runs The National Suicide Hotline and built a model NGO that that links over 2,000 people a day to a network of local crisis centers and is about to be replaced by a federal one.

Since the details are in dispute and perhaps they just didn't get their bills submitted on time http://www.save1800suicide.org/ Why should you care? Well all 800 numbers track callers numbers of course. (more below)

We just made the front page of MSNBC as one of the top three stories with the Senator Reid Makes Appeal to Bloggers story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

"LAS VEGAS - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid made a pitch Saturday to enlist bloggers as a Democratic force in upcoming elections, and said he'll ask Congress for stiffer reporting requirements for the president and the intelligence community.

"I know fighters when I see them. You're fighters," Reid said as he began a warmly received keynote speech to the YearlyKos Convention of Internet bloggers at a Las Vegas Strip resort."