Clinton administration

I'm still pretty exhausted, but I'm trying to upload things as quickly as possible and cut them for blogs.

One event I was able to attend while at the Democratic National Convention was the HRC Concert Rock to Win featuring many performers including Kansas's own Melissa Etheridge, Cindy Lauper, frequent Kansas visitor Rufus Wainwright, Thelma Houston, and Margaret Cho.

The concert began with a short press conference where all agreed that young voters were essential to the election in November. Cindy Lauper said it was important for all people to vote, and that was a key component for her concert with the HRC as well as her national True Colors tour.

"Hopelessness comes out of helplessness. We put the tour together to give information to the people, because information is power, and I strongly believe that this nation was built on the power of the people."

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(The following is an interview of Senator Joe Biden, conducted by Josh Marshall in early Summer 2004.)

Josh Marshall: There's several points I wanted to touch on, and a number of these -- if you can answer them descriptively, or prescriptively I'd be interested in both. One of the main points of the piece, a hypothetical Democratic administration 9 months from now, what the continuities and discontinuities would be with where Clinton left off in 2000. I mean obviously the chessboard has moved all around, and that's a given, but on an issue like North Korea, an issue like Iran, the Atlantic relationship and so forth, and broad kind of questions about how you mix diplomatic muscle and military force. What would you identify as the main continuities and main discontinuities? Again, either descriptively or prescriptively.

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The McCain campaign has made a lot of fuss recently about Obama and taxes. It's clear that their strategy this week turns on a classic Republican ploy: portray all Democrats as "tax-and-spend liberals." The McCain camp debuted a new ad this week called "Taxman," that declares Obama's policies an "economic disaster."

But Factcheck.org and Politifact.com take issue with that assessment, pointing out that many of the McCain campaign's claims about Obama's tax initiatives are false or misleading.

In fact, even the conservative magazine National Review recently acknowledged that Obama's plan offers more tax relief for middle class families than McCain's.

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At this point, the pattern is overwhelmingly clear: Again and again, John McCain's attacks on Barack Obama have been virtually identical to the ones Hillary waged against him during the primaries. We've compiled a chart below that illustrates this in striking terms.

Our chart documents seven examples in which the spirit and substance of Hillary's attacks during the primaries have found themselves repeated in identical terms by the McCain campaign.

In some ways, this is to be expected. After all, two people who are running against Barack Obama will be tempted to adopt the same obvious themes.

But McCain's parroting of Hillary's attacks is nonetheless striking. At times, the McCain campaign has occasionally referred directly to Hillary's criticisms of Obama in a play for her voters. McCain has frequently echoed even some of Hillary's most esoteric and unlikely attacks, too.

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Cross posted from Jewels in the Jungle Blog:

I witnessed the July 24th Berlin speech by US presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama like millions of people here in Germany and all across Europe experienced it___ glued to our TV screens viewing our favorite news channel(s) and being mesmerized by what was yes, an outstanding young American politician at an historical point in his political career and in world history. Five days after the speech at Berlin’s Siegessäule (Victory Column) Germany is still buzzing with the news, the numerous editorials, and debates about the candidate Barack Obama.

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