Attorney General Mike Mukasey, unlike his predecessor Alberto Gonzales, has kept a low profile since taking over the Justice Department last year. That may be less because of discretion than the fact that he spends so little of his time in Washington. McClatchy reports that Mukasey has racked up $155,800 in taxpayer-funded airline expenses for personal trips. Mukasey travels to New York nearly every weekend, and was absent D.C. for a third or more of February, May, July, August, and September. As a point of comparison, Defense Secretary Robert Gates took fewer than six personal trips over the same period of time.
Obama has outspent McCain 3 - 1 last week and 2 - 1 when combining McCain's spending with the Republican National Committee's independent expenditures.
"Make no mistake -- all the wonderful bio ads that the Obama campaign has been running have had an impact by allowing the campaign to impart critical information about their candidate that voters would not now otherwise be hearing or seeing," he writes on his blog at the New Republic.
Religious divide in Kenya: Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 33%, Muslim 10%, indigenous beliefs 10%, other 2%Obama has ties to Kenya and not Somalia. So the talking point out that says Somlia is Obama's native is factually incorrect.
note: a large majority of Kenyans are Christian, but estimates for the percentage of the population that adheres to Islam or indigenous beliefs vary widely
Religious divide in Somalia: Sunni Muslim
his most famous phrases are vacuous. The “audacity of hope”? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. “The fierce urgency of now”? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this – other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president.The substance of this criticism is that the speech writer for Obama (which in to large degree: himself) is not as great a speech writer as Sorenson, the writer for JFK. But even on the substance Gideon has ignored the call by Obama for people to engage and organize and the proof of it has followed in quick succession to show the effectiveness of that call. Given the trend lines for participation in the American democracy has been remarkably low, Obama's campaign has sought to set the course on this to high shores.And then there is “Yes we can”
“Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.”
This sounds to me like a man doing an impression of what he thinks a great speech might be like.
Peter Sellers, a British comedian of the 1960s, caught the genre nicely in a parody speech: “Let us assume a bold thrust and go forward together. Let us carry the fight against ignorance to the four corners of the earth, because it is a fight that concerns us all.” Mr Obama might easily give a speech like that – although he would probably strip out some of the detail.Clearly words alone do not matter as much the ability of a speaker to use those words. Other campaigners have equally tried to deliver their share of good speeches; there is nothing wrong with the words, only with the speaker.
So Mr Obama is not relying on empty exhortation because that is all he is capable of. It is a deliberate political strategy. And it makes sense. The more a candidate gets stuck into the detail, the more likely he is to bore or antagonise voters. Appealing to people’s emotions is less dangerous and more effective.Really?
Wherever I see there is no clear argument or estimate of how many there will be in either of these category.
Clinton claims that everyone is mandated to buy insurance and has not spelled how these mandates will be enforced. Its clear her mandates would technically be possible on the folks in Category 1, but needs to be spelled out for Category 2 for whom this can be big blow. Clinton if I understand right, claims folks from category 1 will provide and subsidize for folks in category 2.
Obama is wary of folks who will game the system (Cat 1) and is open to penalties. What those penalties will be is not spelled out, although such an enforcement is technically possible. Obama can then potentially use enrollments from Cat 1 to offer further subsidies to folks in Cat 2, just as Clinton argues.