Stash is blogging from San Francisco. Doing some quick business.
Scored tickets in a suite at AT&T Stadium. It's the 8th inning and the Rockies are up 3-2. Great seats. Great stadium. Pictures and an update tomorrow!
*******UPDATE**********
The game ended 3-2. The crowd went nuts on a balk call. I really wanted to help the home team, but it was a good call.
Beautiful stadium this AT&T Park. Yeah, that's a Coke Bottle over Center Left. People were going up and down it. I didn't go over to see what was going on.
Note on top of the dugout: it's been 50 years since they left New York.
This was taken from atop a 4 star hotel. That's the Trans Am building on the left and Coit Tower on the right. That blotch in the middle is Alcatraz.
If you're one who didn't think much of George Stephanopoulos' performance as moderator during ABC's April 16th Democratic debate, you won't be crazy about the interview that he did with John McCain the following Sunday.
Jon Stewart calls out The Media for riding the "Sweet Talk Express".
When asked if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd said, "I don't know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim? I don't know. He says he's not. I hope he's not. But I don't know. And it's just something to try to stir people's minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody." We can't help but cry, "Bullshit!"
Paster Roger Byrd of the Jonesville Church of God (Jonesville Church Of GodFront, Jonesville, LA 00007-1343 (318) 339-7807) is a lying sack of shit.
***UPDATE: Here is a video from a local station regarding the Crap Ass lying preacher.
And here's a great photo that illustrates the absurdity of the entire issue, compliments of Suffolk House:
Expressionism, Computers, Plutonium, Skyscrapers, Diet Cola, FM Radio, The Slinky, The Golden Gate Bridge, Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Double Bubble Bubble Gum, The G.I. Bill, McDonald’s, The Big Bang Theory, The Jitterbug, Reynold’s Aluminum Foil, Velcro, Nylon, The Zoot Suit, Television, Baseball’s Color Line, Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar named Desire, Interstate Highways....H/T to RejectMcCain.com
John McCain, ready on Day 1 to lead us into the 21st20th 19th Century.
So, was it just me, or was this about the worst debate in history? Should ABC be banned for about 10 election cycles from ever holding one again?
The entire first hour of a ninety minute debate was pure useless drivel... tabloid questions about issues that don't or shouldn't matter a hill-o-beans to anyone.
We have an illegal, immoral war going on, historical (or hysterical) deficits, environmental issues, energy, education, the national infrastructure, on and on and on and George and Charlie are stuck on useless bullsh*t like lapel pins, sniper-fire, bitter, cookies, and blah, blah, blah.
I think many political watchers from around the world watch our nation's election process with amusement. Granted they hope we'll pull our collective cranial appendages our of our anal orifices long enough to get a real President in the White House, but the issues that capture the media's imaginination are downright embarrassing.
And, as Pogo noted, "We've met the enemy and he is us". If the electorate didn't buy in to this crap, the media would find something else.
Wouldn't it have been wonderful if Hill and turned to Barack about 30 minutes into the process and said, "Seeing as how these two yahoos don't want to discuss anything that matters, how'd you like to ditch this useless gig, go grab a beer and start discussing real issues with some Pennsylvanians?"
I would have crapped myself. But, I would have been cheering!
During the past week, Sen. Hillary Clinton has presented herself as a working class populist, the politician in touch with small town sentiments, compared to the elitism of her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.
But a telling anecdote from her husband's administration shows Hillary Clinton's attitudes about the "lunch-bucket Democrats" are not exactly pristine. In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.
"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."
The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House" -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching "Reagan Democrats." It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs.
"I don't think Obama really gets it that people are looking for a president who stands up for you and not looks down on you," she said this week.
But those who were at the event say the 1995 episode fits into her larger political viewpoint. As Harry Boyte, the director of the who was at the retreat, told The Huffington Post: "[Hillary Clinton] sees herself as the champion of the oppressed, but there is always a kind of good guy versus bad guy mentality. The comment before that was that 'the Reagan Democrats are our enemies and they weren't on our side,' and she was agreeing with that comment. She said we should write them off: screw them."
Perhaps even more telling than Hillary Clinton's "screw 'em" proclamation, however, were the words from her husband that followed. As reported by Barber, Clinton "stepped in, calm and judicious, not irritated, as if rehearsing an old but honorable debate he had been having with his wife for decades."
I know how you feel. I understand Hillary's sense of outrage. It makes me mad too. Sure, we lost our base in the South; our boys voted for Gingrich. But let me tell you something. I know these boys. I grew up with them. Hardworking, poor, white boys, who feel left out, feel that our reforms always come at their expense. Think about it, every progressive advance our country has made since the Civil War has been on their backs. They're the ones asked to pay the price of progress. Now, we are the party of progress, but let me tell you, until we find a way to include these boys in our programs, until we stop making them pay the whole price of liberty for others, we are never going to unite our party, never really going to have change that sticks.
If the tone and tenor of the above sounds familiar, it's because the message, Boyte says, is remarkably similar to what Obama was trying to convey in his now controversial remarks about small town America.
"Well, yeah, absolutely," said Boyte, when asked if Obama and Bill Clinton were expressing the same political viewpoint (Boyte said he and his organization are neutral in the presidential race). "I think Obama's better-or-worse versions of this have always been that people are complicated. It comes from an organizing perspective. You don't write off people, everyone is complicated. It just depends on the issue. And that's what Bill Clinton was saying. He was a sentimental populist." Not to be lost in all this, as Boyte notes, is that Hillary Clinton has consistently been a "champion for the people who were helpless and powerless." But there is a political component to the mindset.
"Hillary Clinton has a very strong customer view: the citizen is the customer and the government the vender," said Boyte. "You can see it in Mark Penn's frame. In fact, last Christmas she had an ad of herself writing checks to different groups." The Clinton campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.
The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.
“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.
Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.
A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”
The sheriff’s deputy, Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. He never mentioned the name of the hospital that supposedly turned her away because he did not know it, he said.
Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.
As Deputy Holman understood it, Ms. Bachtel had died of complications from a stillbirth after being turned away by a local hospital for her failure to pay $100 upfront.
“I mentioned this story to Senator Clinton, and she apparently took to it and liked it,” Deputy Holman said, “and one of her aides said she’d be using it at some rallies.”
Indeed, saying that the story haunted her, Mrs. Clinton repeatedly offered it as a dire example of a broken health care system. At one March rally in Wyoming, for instance, she referred to Ms. Bachtel, a 35-year-old who managed a Pizza Hut, as a young, uninsured minimum-wage worker, saying, “It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”
Mrs. Clinton does not name Ms. Bachtel or the hospital in her speeches. As she tells it, the woman was turned away twice by a local hospital when she was experiencing difficulty with her pregnancy. “The hospital said, ‘Well, you don’t have insurance.’ She said, ‘No, I don’t.’ They said, ‘Well, we can’t see you until you give $100.’ She said, ‘Where am I going to get $100?’
“The next time she came back to the hospital, she came in an ambulance,” Mrs. Clinton continued. “She was in distress. The doctors and the nurses worked on her and couldn’t save the baby.”
Since Ms. Bachtel’s baby died at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, the story implicitly and inaccurately accuses that hospital of turning her away, said Ms. Weiss, the spokeswoman for O’Bleness Memorial said. Instead, the O’Bleness health care system treated her, both at the hospital and at the affiliated River Rose Obstetrics and Gynecology practice, Ms. Weiss said. The hospital would not provide details about the woman’s case, citing privacy concerns; she died two weeks after the stillbirth at a medical center in Columbus.
“We reviewed the medical and patient account records of this patient,” said Mr. Castrop, the health system’s chief executive. Any implication that the system was “involved in denying care is definitely not true.”
Although Mrs. Clinton has told the story repeatedly, it first came to the attention of the hospital after The Washington Post cited it as a staple of her stump speeches on Thursday. That brought it to the attention of The Daily Sentinel in Pomeroy, Ohio, which published an article on Friday.
Neither paper named the hospital or challenged Mrs. Clinton’s account.
Barack Obama has taken the lead over Hillary Clinton 45-43 in Pennsylvania, according to the newest survey from Public Policy Polling.
It’s a remarkable turn around from PPP’s last Pennsylvania poll, conducted two and a half weeks ago, that showed Clinton with a 26 point lead in the state. That poll was released at the height of the Jeremiah Wright controversy and the day before Obama’s major speech on race in Philadelphia. Obama has been trending upward in national polling and in many state level polls since then and this survey reflects that pattern.
“In the last few weeks there has been increasing attention given to the fact that a continuing divisive Democratic nomination fight could hurt the party’s chances of defeating John McCain this fall,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.
“The major movement in Obama’s direction in Pennsylvania could be an indication that Democrats in that state think it’s time to wrap it up.”
Obama is narrowing the gap with white voters, trailing just 49-38, while maintaining his customary significant advantage with black voters. He leads that group 75-17. Obama also leads among all age groups except senior citizens, with whom Clinton has a 50-34 advantage. The poll shows the standard gender gap with Obama leading by 15 points among men while trailing by 10 points with women.
PPP surveyed 1224 likely Democratic primary voters on March 31st and April 1st. The survey’s margin of errors is +/- 2.8%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.
Public Policy Polling had the most accurate numbers of any company in the country for the Democratic primaries in South Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as the closest numbers for any organization that polled the contests in both Texas and Ohio.
