John McCain recently said, "No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have." He was Bush's strongest ally in the march to war in Iraq. McCain consistently repeated the same misjudgments made by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and President Bush. More than 4,000 American troops have lost their lives because of these misjudgments.
McCain says we could be in Iraq for 100 years, and has consistently opposed any plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. He'd rather dump billions more in Iraq than invest it in our economy back home.
McCain accuses folks who want to bring our troops home of "surrender."
I was looking through some old books and such this evening and ran across several old phone books that had been saved over the years. Have a look at the year 1963 in Fort Wayne:
Bill Clinton will visit northeast Indiana for the second time in less than a month on Monday when he stumps for his wife in Decatur. There are few details at this time, but Clinton plans to visit Indy and Corydon as well. No word yet as to whether of not Bosnia will be a subject of discussion. . .
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign announced Saturday that Bill Clinton will visit Decatur, Corydon and Indianapolis. Details on the places and times of his visits will be released later, the campaign said.
It’s the second time in less than a month that Bill Clinton will be in northeast Indiana, trying to convince voters that his wife should be president. He spoke at Fort Wayne’s Grand Wayne Center on March 18.
Hillary Clinton was at Sara’s Family Restaurant in Fort Wayne on March 28, and her Democratic opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, was at Wayne High School in Fort Wayne on April 4.
Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement that his wife opposes. Watch her response to a question about this:
Just a reminder to the regular bunch and an open invitation to everyone else:
The monthly Allen County Democrats breakfast meeting will be held this Saturday, April 12th at Democratic Party headquarters located at 1920 Bluffton Road in Fort Wayne. Representatives from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns will be present to give presentations and answer questions about the candidates. This will be the final breakfast meeting before next month's primary, and possibly your last chance to hear from both campaigns in the same venue.
Coffee and doughnuts will available at 8:30, with the speakers taking the podium at 9:00. As always, we encourage you to bring a non-perishable food item to contribute to the local food banks. In addition, any spare plastic grocery bags you can contribute would be very greatly appreciated as a means to deliver the canned goods. Hope to see you there!
Last night I wrote about Delaware County Republicans attempts to disenfranchise 100's of new Democratic voters by claiming they "didn't have the time or resources" to go through the huge number of registrations they received on Monday, the deadline to register. There was to be an emergency hearing today at 1 PM at the County Building in Muncie.
That meeting took place, and turned heated afterwards:
A Republican voter registration deputy faces battery charges after he tackled a newspaper reporter and hit the Democratic 6th District congressional candidate after a contentious Delaware County Election Board meeting this afternoon.
The meeting had just ended when Will Statom, GOP registration deputy and secretary of the local Republican Party, attacked Star Press reporter Nick Werner while Werner was interviewing Ball State University student Johanna Perez about hundreds of last-minute voter registrations for Democrat Barack Obama's campaign.
"He did not seem very happy that we were stating our opinions," Perez said afterwards about Statom.
Werner said Statom seemed critical of his reporting, sarcastically saying to make sure he screwed up the story again.
Statom had just walked past Werner when Statom turned around and pushed Werner against the wall, grabbed him and they fell to the ground, according to witnesses.
Barry A. Welsh, Democratic 6th district congressional candidate, who attended the meeting, stepped in, and Statom turned around and hit Welsh in the eye.
"When Nick went to the floor, I tried to break it up," Welsh said.
An eyewitness to the event has stated:
I was at the meeting - it was out of control. The man who attacked everyone was accusing Ball State students of being sloppy and wouldn't even vote anyway and then said to the african americans in the crowd "i dont have to take this crap for 'you people' " ... people were yelling at each other through the entire meeting and then the fight broke out afterward. As a student, I was very surprised to see adults act so childish.
When I hear more from Barry, I'll give you his perspective on the day's events. . .
In a sense, Muncie is like nearly every other city and town in our state this active primary season. Folks are registering to vote in record numbers. They're excited about their voice being heard. After all, for the first time in 40 years, our primary votes here in the Hoosier state actually carry some weight. People are rightfully excited and are flocking to join the democratic process this year.
For the last four months, the media has reported on the record number of new voter registrations, the huge interest in participation, and the large turnouts in every primary in every state this season. So states such as Indiana, and cities such as Muncie, have had ample time to prepare for this influx. Most states and municipalities have done an outstanding job of this, preparing extra ballots, adding staff as necessary, whatever it takes. That's where Muncie becomes nearly unlike everyone else - GOP members of the Delaware County’s Election Boardare saying that registrations ,filed on time, will not count because there are too many of them and they are short staffed. This is nothing short of voter disenfranchisement and must not be accepted!
The Election Board office there is staffed by three Democratic appointees and two appointees of the Republican Party, which has declined to fill a third vacant position since 2006. Delaware County GOP Chair Kaye Whitehead stated that there "hadn’t been a need for another worker until the office was flooded with applications on Monday, the final day to register to vote in the May primary". Perhaps if Whitehead had found the time to pick up a newspaper, watch tv news, or surf the web over the last few months, she would have realized that some action was needed on her part.
But, then again, all of these record voter registrations and voter turnouts have been created by, and of benefit to, the Democratic contenders for president. So Whitehead has no reason to grease the wheels on the machine that she is partially in charge of. After all, by doing the right thing and serving the taxpayers of Delaware County, she only makes her own job more difficult come November. Despite the demographics of the area, Muncie is a college town. And college students have been voting for Barack Obama in a big way this election cycle. I can understand Whitehead's fear of allowing these youths to add their voice to the choir. But she has a greater responsibility to the populace that outweighs her partisan views. It's nothing short of a disgrace that she would attempt to deny their votes for the sake of her political party.
Phil Nichols, a Democratic member and president of Delaware County’s Election Board, has called for an an emergency meeting at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the Delaware County Building to discuss how to handle the flood of voter registration applications. Ball State students will be in attendance as well as 6th District Congressional Candidate Barry Welsh. If you are a BSU student or local citizen, I strongly encourage you to attend this event and make your voice heard.
Not surprisingly, depending on from where and whom you get your news, you likely get a variety of viewpoints. Take Terry McAuliffe for example. In today's Journal Gazette, he discusses the importance of Fort Wayne and the surrounding areas to the Clinton camp.
Terry McAuliffe, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign chairman, made it quite clear the importance of northeast Indiana voter turnout for his candidate during his stop last week.
McAuliffe was in town to open Clinton’s local campaign office on Fairfield Avenue. He said it is vital for the party to have a fighter win the nomination, saying Vice President Al Gore should have won easily in 2000, but Democrats didn’t fight hard enough. He also said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., should have won in 2004 but didn’t respond quickly enough to criticism about his military record.
He said Clinton will be that fighter in the fall election, but it will be important for Hoosiers to support her this May. He said about 20 percent of the state’s population gets Chicago television – which he called Obama’s networks, as Sen. Barack Obama hails from Illinois. To balance that out, he said other areas of the state, including Fort Wayne and surrounding areas will need to come out strongly for Clinton.
However, those of us listening to The Ed Schultz Show on Air America on Monday afternoon received a completely different message from Mr.McAuliffe. McAuliffe, en route to the Summit City to open the local Clinton campaign office after working his way up the state, made some rather disparaging remarks about our part of the world.
Ed Schultz asked him if he really thought Hillary Clinton could still win at this point, with the math being what it is and all. McAuliffe replied "Ed, I've been driving through Indiana all morning. I would NOT be sitting here in a McDonalds off of I-69, in Fort Wayne of all places, eating a filet-o-fish sandwich if I didn't believe she could win".
Interpret that however you wish, but what I took away from it was that it was a burden for him to be here. Much in the same manner as the Clinton campaign dismissed the importance of all of the 'little states that don't matter" a while back. Mr.McAuliffe, welcome to our small corner of a "little state" that all of a sudden seems to matter. Just for the record, although we ARE forced to endure mainly conservative talk radio on our radios, we do get satellite radio here in podunk as well. . .
I was up before the sun this morning to prepare myself to head to Wayne High School where I was volunteering with the Obama campaign. When we arrived, the sun was still below the horizon and the clouds were sprinkling on us. We each received our credentials and waited - and waited. The Secret Service and Sheriff’s department had to go through the entire school complete with sniffing dogs - I wonder how many Wayne HS students were shitting their pants over things they may or may not have left in their lockers.. We also had to wait fro the TSA to set up the screening stations that everyone had to walk through upon entering the building.
After we finally were inside, I discovered my job was to seat people in the VIP section - hey, I already had a ticket for this section, so I was cool with that. At one point, one of the gentlemen who walked around with little coiled wires coming out of their ears asked me to reserve a couple of seats for his crew - just in case they needed them. Oh boy, talk about being back in High School - now the Federal hall monitors were making me save seats.
Although the event was scheduled to begin at 11:00AM, there was a slight delay. Obama was introduced by Michael Riley, who was the Indiana campaign director for Sen. Robert Kennedy back in 1968. Oddly enough, my first presidential rally was at the ripe age of 13 in Indianapolis - exactly 40 years to the day. It was on that date that Robert Kennedy informed us all that Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, so it was appropriate that the majority of Obama’s speech was about the legacy of Dr. King. And how fortunate for me to have a front row seat at a speech that in no way resembled the other stump speeches the Illinois Senator has given in recent weeks. Today was special.
After his speech, Obama kidded around about being finished, then went on to accept several questions during the town hall style meeting. He handled everything from gun ownership and unions to youth and the environment. The final question came from a youngster who appeared to be around 10 years of age. He wanted to know what inspired Obama to run for president. Obama responded by mentioning Dr. King’s book, “Why We Can’t Wait“. He said there was no time to wait. “Now is the best time.”
Below are two videos - the first is video of the events leading up to Obama’s speech and the second is Obama’s remarks about Dr. King.
