The News That's Fit To Abuse

Race And Gender

Amazingly, Barrack Obama's campaign is gaining momentum. Here's an interesting article.

A year ago, Clinton was the prohibitive favourite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, with a massive war chest, a national organisation, universal brand recognition, the support of the union movement, a strong base in the Senate, and millions of women wanting a woman to be president for the first time.

All this has not proved enough. The only factor that has kept Clinton in the lead has been racial animosity. African-Americans and Latino-Americans do not like each other. Their voting in this campaign has conformed to this reality. While Obama has won the overwhelming majority of the black vote, Clinton has won the overwhelming majority of the Latino vote.

In Washington, the commentariat has attributed the Clinton campaign's dominance of the Latino to the "goodwill factor", a legacy of the presidency of Bill Clinton and his support of the free trade pact with Mexico. This is partly true and mostly rubbish. It is not the goodwill factor but the ill-will factor that has split the Democratic vote so cleanly on racial lines.

Whites, in contrast, have not voted as a racial bloc. Not at all.

They are voting for Obama in their millions. He has won more votes from white Americans than any of the Republican candidates in their primary races, which are dominated by white voters. Hillary Clinton's natural majority with women voters has been offset by empathy for Obama among white men.

The trouble facing the Clinton campaign is that it is running out of Latinos. Only Texas remains, a big prize she will win, thanks to the large Mexican-American vote, the same bloc that delivered California last week, thus saving the Clinton campaign. Beyond Texas I think she has a problem.

Her lead in the polls, and on the ground, and with white voters, simply evaporated as soon as the political shooting started this year, in the rural Midwest state of Iowa. Five weeks ago, after the Iowa caucuses, I began this column with these words: "I've been following or covering American politics all my adult life and the best speech I have ever heard in a presidential campaign was delivered at 10.30 in the evening, Iowa time, by a man who had been up since 4am. That man was Barack Obama."

On Saturday, for the first time in the campaign, Clinton and Obama spoke at the same event, the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Richmond, Virginia. Clinton was polished. Obama was electric. The crowd responded accordingly.

Obama was able to lay out key and defining positions that Clinton simply cannot access. As he said at the weekend, he always opposed the invasion of Iraq, "a war which should not have been authorised and never have been fought", and a war that Clinton voted to authorise. He can say, as he did yesterday, that his campaign has been financed by more than 200,000 small donors, not by lobbyists, big donors and big unions, unlike Clinton. He can advocate a mandatory national health insurance safety net for every American, while Clinton's plans for healthcare reform remain mired in complexity.

If Clinton is dumped by the gathering wave of support for Obama, the November election will offer a stark choice. Senator John McCain, who has almost wrapped up the Republican nomination, is a 71-year-old graduate of West Point who fought in Vietnam, was captured and tortured, who backed the invasion of Iraq and the recent troop surge. The success of that surge, and his record as a war hero, have been critical to his success in a field that has not excited the imagination of the Republican Party, a party fatigued by the presidency of George Bush.

The Democratic primaries have mobilised almost twice as many voters as the Republicans, and much greater energy. The great irony of the 2008 campaign is that Clinton, and not the Republican nominee, is the candidate who can most galvanise the Republicans. No similar animosity is offered to the 46-year-old African-American from Chicago and Harvard generating so much electricity among white voters.

Whites, in contrast, have not voted as a racial bloc. Not at all.

They are voting for Obama in their millions. He has won more votes from white Americans than any of the Republican candidates in their primary races, which are dominated by white voters. Hillary Clinton's natural majority with women voters has been offset by empathy for Obama among white men.

So according to this article, these are the choices being made:

• Black Guy - Votes Obama out of race-&-gender solidarity.

• White Chick - Votes Hillary out of race-&-gender solidarity

• Black Woman - is in a dilemma but Votes Obama out of race solidarity; drops gender.

• Latino Guy - Votes Hillary because she's *not Black*. Race counts more than gender.

• Latino Chick - As above,Votes Hillary. Gender solidarity plus race considerations.

• Big surprise, White Guy Votes Obama out of gender solidarity; drops race.

The biggest block out of the six is actually White Guy and if they're unanimously going for Barrack Obama, I think Obama's going to win the Democratic Nomination now. What can be gleaned from this likely outcome? It is perhaps that amongst liberals, in a contest between the black liberation politics of the 1960s and the Women's Liberation politics of the 1960s, at some level the former took root in American society more than the latter. That the White Guy had fewer problems letting the Black Guy into the workplace than letting women.

I still think an Obama Presidency is going to be short-lived, and likely to end in a hail of bullets. However, Mr. Obama, go unto history's embrace. It may just be your destiny.

Gaming and Game-ability
The Federal Government is looking to shut down the pokies.

TENS of thousands of pokies could be phased out across suburban Australia within a decade under a radical new federal tax plan.

The pokies purge would see gaming machines confined to casinos and race tracks.

Family First Senator Steve Fielding will introduce the anti-pokies legislation in Parliament next week.

It involves gradual tax increases being imposed on individual poker machines in pubs and clubs, rendering them non-profitable within five to 10 years.

All revenue from the tax would be held in a trust fund to help community and sporting groups through the transition.

His bold plan came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hinted at his own gambling reforms by slamming the placement of ATMs in pokie venues.

"Frankly, I think it is wrong that they are there – that's my personal view," he said.

"I do not want to promise the world here, but I know we have a problem and I know that in partnership with states and territories we can work through an agreed analysis on the social impact and what to do about it."

My Mother will be saddened if they disappear because she quite likes them. As does my aunt who flies in regularly from Japan.

UFOs, Huh?
Check this out. Untold Story says that Buzz and Neil and Mike saw UFOs on the way to the Moon.

Nearly 40 years later, this program delves into the not-so-pretty reality behind the mission's achievement. Aldrin and NASA employees discuss the crew's sighting of a UFO (covered up for 30 years), their craft's doomed escape procedures and some almost fatal mechanical failures. This well-made and revealing documentary merges archival footage with interviews to good effect

That's so weird. I didn't know NASA admitted that the crew saw UFOs and that they covered it up. Wikipedia has this entry here.

In 2005, while being interviewed for a documentary entitled "First on the Moon: The Untold Story," Aldrin told an interviewer that he and the crew of the Apollo 11 witnessed an unidentified flying object (UFO)--that is, in the literal sense of the word, an unknown object, not a form of extraterrestrial life. David Morrison, a NAI Senior Scientist, claims to have had a conversation with Aldrin in which he explained that the documentary cut out the interview portions in which Aldrin told interviewers that the Apollo 11 crew ultimately concluded that they were probably seeing a detached panel from the spacecraft.^{[13][14][15][16]} When Aldrin appeared on The Howard Stern Show on August 15, 2007, Howard Stern asked him about the supposed UFO sighting. Aldrin confirmed that there was no such sighting of anything deemed extraterrestrial, and said they were and are "99.9 percent" sure that the object was the detached panel. He also revealed to Stern that he underwent plastic surgery.^[17]

I don't think they saw little green men flying in Flying Saucers. Talk about confusing.