Archive for February, 2008
February 22nd, 2008
Way back on Jan. 3, at the Iowa Democratic caucus I covered in Des Moines, I commented on the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign offered an entire table of sandwiches, soft drinks, chips and other snacks? Turns out that was a costly table — when you add others like it around the state. Her campaign spent $95,000 at the Hy-Vee supermarket chain. They didn’t list the specific items the money paid for, but they did boast in advance of the caucuses that they intended to feed people at them.
No other campaigns did that, and free ham and roast beef sandwiches were not enough to convince Iowans that Hillary as president would deliver them free lunches.
February 19th, 2008
I was telling colleagues around the newsroom today (Tuesday) that I believed the Wisconsin primary would be close between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I was wrong. Obama won a blowout victory, about 58 to 41 percent with 84 percent of the vote counted. On the GOP side, John McCain scored a less impressive victory over Mike Huckabee, but my suspicion is that some Republicans slipped over to the Democratic column and voted in that primary, because McCain is the all-but-certain Republican nominee.
The next two weeks will be a time of increasingly negative campaigning by the Clinton campaign, but I’m not sure it will work very well. Obama can always go negative, too. He can point out how Hillary, appointed universal health care czar by Bill Clinton in 1993, failed miserably and still hasn’t told us who those 500 people were on her health care task force.
I watched Obama’s victory speech, which draggedon for 45 minutes. He basically gave his standard stump speech with more details — obviously to address critics who say his speeches lack specifics. And as I said in my Tuesday column,
Both Democrats essentially share the same platform of more government solutions to domestic problems. Majorities in recent decades have rejected the liberal approach, but the electorate may be turning after a decade or more of runaway capitalism — aided and abetted by Republicans — which has literally taken American jobs and ran away with them to China, Singapore and India.
February 18th, 2008
It occurs to me that we are having another monstrous pothole season, which everyone enjoys cursing and crying and carping about. They are especially bad this year, all around the Rockford area and the stateline. I was, however, in southern and central Wisconsin over the past five days covering presidential candidates, and the potholes weren’t quite so bad.
This is nothing new; I’ve noticed for years that whenever my car hits Wisconsin pavement, the ride gets smoother. Anybody have similar experiences, or am I just imagining better roads in Wisconsin?
February 18th, 2008
U.S. Sen Dick Durbin, D-IL comes to Rockford and Belvidere Tuesday. He’ll stop at Aldeen Park where he’ll inspect the “Alpine dam,” then take a look at the flood-damage area in southeast Rockford. Durbin will also go to City e a signing ceremony for the Keith Creek-Alpine Dam Risk Management Feasibility Study.
That’s not all. The Senate Majority Whip (second in command in the Senate) will tour the Chrysler plant in Belvidere, meet with black leaders at Booker Washington Center, take questions from children at Martin Luther King School, then tour the University of Illinois School of Rural Medicine.
In between stops I hope to grab a few minutes of the senator’s time to talk about the presidential race (he’s a key supporter of Barack Obama) and about his tough talk to freight railroads UP and CN, about operating Amtrak trains on time.
February 16th, 2008
While waiting Saturday for Hillary Clinton to speak in Kenosha’s Brat Stop night spot, I had a conversation with Betty Phillips of Racine, and we were talking about how times have changed.
For we have come very far as a nation, and it is historic, to have the Democratic race for president now down to two candidates — a black man and a woman. And BarackObama, the black man, carried the white vote in Virginia, the seat of the old Confederacy.
(As I write this I remember how ironic it is that the Democrats were the pro-slavery party before the Civil War, and the Southern Democrats, including Sen. Al Gore, Sr., and Sen. J. William Fulbright, Bill Clinton’s mentor, were segregationists as late as the 1960s.)
Mrs. Phillips’ husband, she said, played in the minor leagues in the old Milwaukee Braves organization, in the South, during the 1950s.
At the beginning of the games, she told me, the sound system did not play the National Anthem.
“They always played Dixie,” she said.
February 16th, 2008
OK, I know this is a Trivial Pursuit kind of item, but The Brat Stop in Kenosha, Wis., where Hillary Clinton spoke Saturday, is a popular nightclub that has featured some big rock acts, including Rockford’s own Cheap Trick.
By the way, in case you’re interested, the band for Feb. 23 is Radioactive Squirrels.
I don’t know if appearing at this venue makes Hillary a rock star or not.
She could front a band called Capitol Hillary and The Policy Wonks, I guess.
February 16th, 2008
Hillary Clinton’s visit to Kenosha nightspot “the Brat Stop”
showed just how close her platform is to Barack Obama’s — or as she’d put it, how close Obama’s platform is to hers.
Both promise to end George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — mainly the 1 percent who make more than $250,000 a year. Both promise to make health care affordable to all, but Hillary’s plan is mandatory, Barack’s is not.
Basically, Hillary said Saturday that Congress has a good health care plan, and every American ought to be able to buy into it.
Restoring Amercian manufacturing is central to both candidates’ plans. Hillary said that the government should provide subsidies to the US auto industry, as European and Japanese governments do to auto companies do. Government provided health care would assist companies by removing a tremendous burden on them, she said.
Kenosha once was home to a sprawling, lakefront American Motors factory that made Nashes, then Ramblers. The site is now been made over into condos, shops, a park and museum.
Both promsie to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.
After her speech and town hall meeting with about 400 supporters, she had a confab with reporters. She said that superdelegates, 796 big shots in the Democratic Party, should make up their own minds about whom to support at the Democratic Convention in Denver. And she said again that Michigan and Florida delegates should be seated. Clinton won both states, although she was the only candidate on the ballot in Michigan. Because those states moved up their primaries in violation of party rules, the DNC said their delegates wouldn’t count. So, no candidates campaigned there.
Obama says that for the states’ delegates to count, they should hold caucuses.
Clinton admitted that “this race is essentially tied” between her and Obama, but she insisted, as she has all along, that she’s the experienced candidate who can do battle effectively with Republicans.
Wisconsin votes Tuesday, and Clinton has, according to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, scaled back her campainging in that state. The paper, Wisconsin’s largest, endorses Obama in Sunday’s editions.
February 16th, 2008
Many years ago, the Experimental Aircraft Association, a group of aviation enthusiasts who like to build and fly their own airplanes, had their annual event , the EAA Fly-In, at what was then the Greater Rockford Airport. My dad was an amateur radio operator, and his group used to operate a mobile message center at the fly-in, so I spent a lot of time out there as a kid. (There were no mobile phones back then.)
The event got so big that the airport leaders of that day believed they couldn’t handle it anymore. The fly-in moved to Wittman Field in Oshkosh. I’d never had occasion to go there until Friday when I had to cover John McCain’s Republican campaign for president. The EAA, I discovered, has its world headquarters and 200 employees in Oshkosh.
There are over 170,000 EAA members worldwide, about 150,000 in the U.S.
The EAA has a beautiful headquarters at the airport. They also have a spectacular tourist attraction, an aviation museum that has a civilian wing and a military wing that focuses on World War II aviation. There are interactive displays; it’s a lot more than just static displays of aircraft. I particularly enjoyed replicas of the Wright Brothers first airplane, a P-51 Mustang, a Spitfire, a Wright mail plane, and various experimental planes from decades past.
It’s definitely worth a visit, and it’s easy to find. Visit them at www.eaa.org
The EAA AirVenture, as the fly-in is now known, has 10,000 planes nowadays. This year, it’s from July 28 to August 3, featuring war-birds, ultralights, light-sport aircraft, float-planes, aerobatics, homebuilts and vintage airplanes.
February 15th, 2008
You’ve got to wonder why Mike Huckabee is staying in the presidential race. Sure, the former Arkansas governor has won some primary elections. But John McCain can’t be beat because there are not enough delegates left to beat him, even if Huckabee started winning.
And if Huckabee did want to win, he would be in Wisconsin this weekend. The primary is Tuesday, Feb. 19, and where is Mike Huckabee? He gave an interview to the Milwaukee paper on Friday, but The Washington Post says he has headed south for the weekend, to …
Grand Cayman Island, where he is giving a lecture for pay.
If Huckabee wants a future in the party, and I believe he does, he would be smart to get out of the race now, endorse McCain, and hope for a vice-presidential slot with the Arizona senator.
February 15th, 2008
Republicans aren’t having a lot of luck raising money this year; Democrats are. So, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain made a point Friday in Oshkosh, Wis., of reminding reporters that he and Barack Obama had agreed to sign-up for government funding of their general election campaigns. (No, Obama has not won the Democratic nomination yet, but McCain seems to think so.) McCain said he hopes Obama keeps his pledge.
But if Obama were to do so, he’d shut down a fantastic cash raising machine that any candidate for president would drool to have. Obama does not take money from lobbyists, but his Internet-based small donor base has grown by leaps and bounds to the point that he easily out-raises Hillary Clinton in contributions.
That huge cash flow, some $32 million in January, has allowed Obama to field a muscular campaign in any state he chooses. If he wins the nomination, does he give up his personal ATM and take the federal cash?
McCain would like it if Obama did.
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