Live Blogging!! omg

The Northwesterndems blog is proud to bring you LIVE BLOGGING from the State of the Union Address (party)!!!!! So you all should come out tonight to Annenberg G15, 7:30-10 to watch the address, grab some pizza, and wait for some good ol' mispronunciation.

The Kennedys support Barack

No insightful commentary from me today, just thought I'd steer our Barack supporters to two articles about the Kennedys' support for Barack.

Caroline Kennedy's Op-Ed

Ted Kennedy announces support for Barack

NYT Endorsements

The New York Times came out with its endorsements today, which made me both happy and sad, but both of which were very well argued and worth reading (Republican at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri2.html, Democratic at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html?em&ex=1201410000&en=8db6e72c400e74b2&ei=5087%0A). Their endorsement of McCain was extremely tepid and prefaced by how disappointed they were with the Republican field as a whole. The editorial board on Romney: "It is hard to find an issue on which he has not repositioned himself to the right since he was governor of Massachusetts. It is impossible to figure out where he stands or where he would lead the country." On Huckabee: "To attract Republican primary voters, he has become an anti-immigrant absolutist. His insertion of religion into the race, herding Mr. Romney into a defense of his beliefs, disqualified him for the Oval Office."

What satisfied me the most, however, was the NYT's harshest criticism, that of Giuliani. You all should definitely read it, but here's a tidbit: "The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power...Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking...The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign." Ah, that's enough to make any liberal's day.

Sadly, the NYT also endorsed Hillary, but gave credit to all three candidates for their strong positions on Iraq, health care and economic rejuvenation. Their main point in picking Hillary was that Obama's message of hope and change seems too vague. I wonder if they've looked into his bipartisan work in the Illinois state senate or grassroots campaign and community organizing as indicators of how he would bring the country together and bring democracy back to the people. Oh well, at least they bashed most of the Republicans.

governmental lies > heath

I hate to take time away from the oh-so-devastating death of Heath, but I think that 935 false statements about Iraq after 9/11 takes the cake, if you will.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/misinformation_study

Bye Bye Freddy...

Apparently, Fred Thompson has officially dropped out of the race. Pictured above with his much-much-much-younger wife, apparently running for president interfered with his nap schedule.

So what does this mean? Where will Thompson's whopping 8 delegates go? That remains to be seen, but it's likely that his support among conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, should benefit Huckabee. It's a bad time to be a squirrel, in other words.

Best Debate Yet

If you're reading this between now and the next hour and twenty minutes or so, there's a debate on. And it's a good one. Clinton and Obama (and to a lesser extent Edwards) are taking each other down. It's fun to watch. Apparently it's attack Obama day, except he keeps fending them off.

Mike Huckabee's down home dorm cooking

So, since stupid things like "real life" and "classes" and "quantum mechanics" have made it so that we haven't been able to post much in the last week, I thought I'd share some news from campaignlandia, where the next stops are Nevada and South Carolina. Both parties vote in Nevada, starting tomorrow around noon, and the Republican votes from SC will start coming in sometime tomorrow evening. In other words, since it's going to be a balmy 7 degrees fahrenheit tomorrow (or -13 C, if you prefer), it'd be a perfect day to stay inside and watch politics on tv while not freezing to death.

South Carolina, in fact, is where the most interesting news is coming from. Our good friend Mike Huckabee, eager to prove his southern folksiness, gives us this valuable tidbit:

When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper - because that was the
only thing they would let us use in the dorm - and we would fry squirrels in a
popcorn popper in the dorm room.

So yeah. Obviously, there's a whole aspect of dorm cooking that I've never experienced. Next time I'm hungry in the middle of the night, I'll just go out and find a squirrel. There's no way this could possibly go wrong.

Why do they make it so easy?

Why Mitt Romney is vaguely evil...part of his stance on healthcare from his website:

"Stop The Free-Riders. Use some of the money currently spent on providing expensive "free care" for the uninsured at emergency rooms to instead help the truly needy buy private insurance." ...with tax cuts and deregulation of the insurance industry. Right, why take the simple and straightforward path of just providing healthcare for all Americans when we could toss some money in the air and hope it trickles down? I'll leave a full discussion of healthcare for later, but for now, I shake my fist angrily at Mitt Romney.

Oh, and Ron Paul hates blacks and gays (thanks to Jeff for bringing this to my attention earlier). So if I hear one more libertarian nut go on about how much Ron Paul is for "freedom," I just might scream.

Things I learned today...

1) Don't trust polls. Most polls of New Hampshire had Barack Obama up around 8 points on Hillary Clinton, but Hillary pulled out a victory.

2) Throwing a tennis ball around relieves stress and anger.

3) Tennis balls bounce off of walls and ceilings and can damage alarm clocks and sensitive regions of the human anatomy.

4) I don't feel like talking about New Hampshire.

huckabee. so special.

I am a solid Democrat. Yet, I will be so sad about the state of our nation if the Republicans nominate Mike Huckabee. I will be happy for such an opponent for a Democrat. Yet I will be sad that at least 50% of our nation believes Mike is the best man for the job.

My parents got me a subscription to Newsweek for my birthday. Their most recent cover features Obama. Yet is was a side article by Howard Fineman that caught my attention. Most notably, Fineman states, "...Republicans and their secular conservatives allies are distraught at the thought of Huckabee as the GOP's 2008 presidential nominee. They couch their fears in terms of secular issues: his spending record as governor, his advocacy of a national sales tax, his confusion about the location of Pakistan." Seriously?!

My visit to the Larry Craig bathroom

You might remember that back in June, little-known Republican Idaho Senator Larry Craig brought his wide stance to a restroom at the Minneapolis International Airport, and promptly got caught soliciting sex from an undercover police officer.

Since, by chance, my flight back to Northwestern went through that same Minneapolis International Airport earlier today, I'm proud to bring you the following pictures:


On the outside, it looks like any other airport bathroom. In fact, I've probably walked past it a hundred times and not known it was a hotspot for anonymous sex.


But inside, precautions have been taken. This is the actual toilet in the stall--the second from the right--that Larry Craig sat in. Unfortunately, some tourist-hating people covered it in plastic. But the toilet the cop that busted him sat on is still open and completely usable.

The best part is that later this year, the Republican National Convention is in Minneapolis/St. Paul. And all the delegates will have to walk by this bathroom on their way out. Irony is fun.

reason number 5,324,768 that Huckabee is crazy...

while making a speech today on the news he said that we should make chuck norris secretary of defense.

Rudy 9iu11ani - Shameless, or Shamless?

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, after pulling a spectacular 3% yesterday in Iowa, isn't particularly disconcerted. He's not even worried, in fact:

He flatlined in Iowa and he's struggling in New Hampshire, but Rudy Giuliani shook off the early-state blues Thursday as only he can.

"None of this worries me - Sept. 11, there were times I was worried," Giuliani said.

Huh. Good to know.

Results! and a farewell to Dodd and Biden.

So, the returns are almost entirely in.

From the Iowa Democratic Party:

Senator Barack Obama : 37.55%
Senator John Edwards : 29.81%
Senator Hillary Clinton : 29.44%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.10%
Senator Joe Biden : 0.94%
Uncommitted : 0.13%
Senator Chris Dodd : 0.02%
Precincts Reporting: 1762 of 1781

On the Republican side, Huckabee is about 8 points ahead of Romney, who's around 10 in front of Thompson and McCain. So the Huckster pulled it out.

But after dismal showings, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have announced that they're dropping out. Biden will make a great foreign policy-oriented VP or else a Secretary of State, while Dodd has shown tremendous leadership in the senate and we'll see if he gets a leadership position there in the future.

All in all, it's a good start to primary season and should keep the news machines running till New Hampshire votes on Tuesday.

I-O-W-A

Up here in Minnesota, we like to make fun of of our neighbors to the south. For example: why do shoes in Iowa say TGIF on them? To remind them that toes go in first!

So, naturally, it's totally confusing that Iowa gets a large amount of say in choosing our president. Not that its 95% white, predominantly rural population isn't representative of the country as a whole or anything. Nope. In fact, Iowa has a great foundation in education. I learned that from their state quarter. That's right. They don't have anything famous in their state to brag about except their schools. As someone who took many an Iowa Test of Basic Skills when I was younger, I'm not convinced that's something to brag about. But Iowa has also produced such celebrities as Herbert Hoover, so we can also blame them for the Great Depression.

Despite this, a tiny tiny segment of Iowa's population will get to skip the Orange Bowl tonight to begin the official 2008 presidential election process. It's a dead heat between Clinton, Edwards and Obama on the democratic side and between our favoritest former governors Romney and Huckabee for the republicans. The latest polls show Obama and the Huckster with sliiiight leads, but it's going to be a close one tonight.

I'll be probably checking in/updating later on today. Leave comments if you're sitting around watching it on TV tonight (like I'll probably be doing, fun fun fun).