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How does Chechyna love thee?

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 19, 2008

Funny, scary, sad or all three? In a moment worthy of The Onion, President Putin in his last presidential press conference was asked about the voter turnout in Chechyna, where he had ruthlessly quashed a rebellion:

At another point, a French journalist asked Mr. Putin if he thought that the official results recorded in Chechnya during parliamentary elections in December were realistic. According to the Central Election Commission, the voter turnout in Chechnya was 99 percent, and 99 percent of the voters cast their ballots for United Russia, the party Mr. Putin leads…

Mr. Putin, looking confident, asked a state journalist from Chechnya to answer the question. “These are absolutely realistic figures,” the journalist said. “Personally, all my acquaintances, including myself, voted for United Russia.”

Domestic issues Election 2008 Liberalism Obama Politics

Lawrence Lessig for Congress

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 19, 2008

Reihan, guest-blogging on Andrew Sullivan’s blog on the possibility of Lawrence Lessig running for Congress:

I think of Lessig as an almost paradigmatic Obamacrat, a smart and accomplished professional interested in reforming and revitalizing government for the betterment of all Americans through the embrace of disruptive technologies and, um, cherished American principles. If this is the animating impulse behind the new liberalism, the new conservatism that will rise to challenge it will be sharper and more forward-looking still.

Election 2008 Obama Politics

Scooter Libby Justice

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 19, 2008

I meant to write this piece last week – when I first read Dean Barnett’s column in The Weekly Standard – and now, as I’m writing the piece, I find that Media Matters already covered the controversy – because Rush Limbaugh picked up the storyline Mr. Barnett was trying to create.

So I’ll just briefly point out one fact and let you read an excerpt from Mr. Barnett’s piece. The single fact that makes the whole column Mr. Barnett wrote a joke: the jeremiad he refers to as “a marked departure from the kind of successful campaign that Obama has run” has in fact been part of Mr. Obama’s stump speech since September 2007 when I heard Mr. Obama speak at Washington Square Park. An excerpt from Mr. Barnett’s column is after the jump.

Foreign Policy Pakistan

One Pakistan Story

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 18, 2008

From Jane Perlez of the New York Times telling one of the many factors that might influence today’s vote in Pakistan:

The most potent criticism of Mr. Moonis revolves around the mailing of money orders from government funds worth 1,500 rupees, about $38, to all the homes in his constituency.

The orders were signed by his father, who until Nov. 20 was the chief minister of Punjab, the most important post in the province.

According to provincial government documents, the money came from a program intended for disaster victims that calls for means testing of recipients. The dates on the money orders shows they were signed by Mr. Elahi on Nov. 29, nine days after he left office. Mr. Moonis’s opponent, Ashraf Ejaz Gill of the Peoples Party, said he had complained to the Election Commission to no avail.

During an interview in his lavish campaign headquarters in Lahore, Mr. Moonis said the mailing of the money orders was a mistake. “Someone in the government decided to put the whole constituency down instead of the poorest of the poor,” Mr. Moonis said. “It was some bureaucratic mess-up.”

Humor

Conan’s Greatest Guest Moments

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 17, 2008

This has apparently been around the interets for quite a while, but I haven’t laughed this hard in a while:

Election 2008 Obama Politics

Just words?

Domestic issues Life

Foreclosures Available

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 17, 2008

A depressing sign I saw on my way back from work a few days ago:

Foreclosure Sign

Election 2008 Obama The Clintons

80 NYC Election Districts

The New York Times reports on some anomalies in the results reported out of New York City this past February 5th:

Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district…

“First it was reported at 141 to 0, now it’s 261 to 136 in an Assembly district that went 12,000 to 8,000 for Barack,” Mr. Davis said on Friday.

Election 2008 Obama Politics

The Obamas’ Student Loans

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 14, 2008
10 Comments on The Obamas’ Student Loans

[digg-reddit-me]According to today’s New York Times profile of Michelle Obama, the Obamas were just able to pay off their student loans a “couple of years ago” – presumably with the proceeds from Dreams of My Father after it became a bestseller.

I think this probably says more about the increasing cost of college than it does of Mr. Obama’s relative youth. After all – the Clintons were the same age in 1992 as the Obamas are now, and although I do not know when Mr. and Ms. Clinton’s college loans were paid off, I am pretty certain it was some time before they decided to run for president.

Today, some student loans are repaid over 30 years. I have no idea how long mine are set to be paid over – but I’m planning as if I will be paying them for the foreseeable future. There are some in my generation will still be paying off their loans when they are in their fifties.

Election 2008 Obama Politics

$5.01: The Price of Change

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date February 12, 2008
16 Comments on $5.01: The Price of Change

Donate Today!

[digg-reddit-me] For more on today’s Barack Obama “money bomb”: The Grand Panjandrum has been a huge booster; and it was blueinks over at the Daily Kos who got this rolling.

The key aspect of today’s “money bomb”: donate $5.01 (or a multiple of $5.01) to Barack Obama’s campaign in honor of another legislator from Illinois who ran for the presidency whose birthday happens to be today. Abraham Lincoln appears on both the $5

To learn some more about Mr. Obama, check out “The Case for Barack Obama”, written by me, or Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Nation’s pragmatic and inspiring endorsement, and for Mr. Obama’s positions on specific issues, check out his website.

[via reddit]

Let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man – such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care…

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it

Lincoln at Cooper Union in 1860.

Donate today!

Check back for updates as to the state of fundraising today. I hope to be getting them periodically.

Update: Kate Stone is also promoting the $5.01 day.

Also, welcome redditors, and spread the word!