By The River

I'm not sure now that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President this year. Despite his break from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of his church, and his denunciation yesterday of Wright's comments, this damage may be permanent. I hope I'm wrong, but I sense that Obama is in a deep hole with walls of sand that will collapse as he tries to climb out.

How well he does in North Carolina and Indiana will determine his fate. If he doesn't win North Carolina by a large enough margin, or loses Indiana, I suspect both the momentum of this race and the superdelegates will begin to shift to Hillary Clinton. It is already happening to a certain extent.

Here's a statement issued this morning by one of the previously uncommitted Pennsylvania superdelegates, Bill George, president of the state AFL-CIO. He says Clinton is the "most electable" candidate against John McCain:

“Hillary Clinton has the strength and experience to jumpstart the economy and rebuild the middle class,” George said. “Working families in Pennsylvania overwhelmingly favored her in last week’s primary, and I feel that she is our strongest candidate to carry Pennsylvania in November and win back the White House.”

Obama has been a new type of black candidate, rising above the many and legitimate grievances of his race in the name of a greater good. But he is being pulled down by the midgets around him, notably Rev. Wright, who wallow in the past. Like too many clergy, Wright is tone deaf to how his comments will be perceived outside his own church and now, advised of that, doesn't really care. Wright, at a news conference at the National Press Club several days ago arranged by a rabid Clinton supporter, gave vent to some of the worst sort of conspiracy theories that have circulated over the past 20 years, saying for example that AIDS was released in Africa by the U.S. government.

Obama can get past this, but only if he becomes tougher and more confrontational on the campaign trail. It is silly to think this sort of attack will cease if he gets the nomination. The Republicans will probably have Wright speak at their convention, the Zell Miller of 2008. Liberals have been losers over the past 25 years because they assumed that the rightness of their positions would be apparent to voters bombarded with slime attacks on liberal candidates. Obama has to get in their and fight, or Clinton will win.

Posted by David at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Guilt by association is not only a valid campaign tactic, but it is also a necessary ingredient to getting to know a candidate."
--Bobby Eberle, president and CEO of GOP USA, 4-24-08

It's not often you read a straight-out defense of right-wing smear tactics like this, but here's the post it came from. This could have come straight from the playbook of the old smearmeister himself, the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin. GOP USA is not the national party organization, but rather a far right group that works to advance conservative "ideals," according to its website.

Eberle, who is said to have once employed fake journalist and former gay male escort "Jeff Gannon" in his Talon News Service (gay by association?), was defending a sleazy new TV ad being run in North Carolina by the state Republican Party against two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, but which ultimately targets Barack Obama. The ad, which you can view on the link in the second paragraph, notes that these two candidates support Obama, who in turn "supports" Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the soon-to-be Willie Horton of the 2008 campaign. As you may have heard, Rev. Wright, pastor of the church Obama attends, goes off on radical tangents on rare occasions, saying things that many black people believe but which tend to outrage whitey.

(Just as an aside, if everyone quit their place of worship when the preacher, rabbi, or imam said something they didn't like, the world would look like a Keystone Kops routine. People belong to churches, synagogues and mosques and support them for more reasons than who's giving the sermons).

Sen. John McCain, who may be worried about ads linking him to people like Charles Keating, has condemned the ad, as have some other national Republicans, which upset Eberle to no end. But McCain can't really control this sort of hate-mongering, and we can expect more of these Six Degrees of Separation ads linking Democratic candidates, through Obama, to everyone from Adolph Hitler to people who club baby seals. The sense of shame that once made people hide their support for slimeball tactics like this has been replaced by an ethos of, if it works for us, it is good for us.

The key is to not let it work for anyone.

Posted by David at 07:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No matter what you may read elsewhere, Hillary Clinton's margin of victory over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania currently stands at 9.2 percent, with 99.51 percent of precincts reporting, according to state election officials. Not 10 percent, the double-digit benchmark set by some of her prominent supporters prior to the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday.

As far as the delegate count after Pennsylvania, Clinton narrowed the gap with Sen. Barack Obama by only nine delegates because of the proportional representation system used in all Democratic primaries and caucuses. She got 82, he got 73, according to CBS News. Not sure where the other three went, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Posted by David at 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary over Sen. Barack Obama, but her victory margin was in the single digits, 9.2 percent, under the 10 percent benchmark set by her supporters. Given that this is her kind of state, with lots of older white people, it should have been much higher.

Clinton, according to official figures from the Pennsylvania Department of State, received 1,237,696 votes, or 54.6 percent, to Obama's 1,029,672 votes, or 45.4 percent. That's with 99.44 percent of precincts counted. The number of delegates she receives isn't certain because of Pennsylvania's odd way of assigning them. Fifty-five of the state's 158 delegates are assigned proportionally based on statewide totals. The other 103 are assigned proportionally based on the totals in each Congressional District. That's too much math for this early in the morning, but the results won't much changes Obama's overall lead in delegates or his lead in total popular vote.

Obama carried Philadelphia with 65 percent of the vote, and that city accounted for 280,147, or 26.8 percent, of his statewide total. He also won big, though not as big as in Philadelphia, in Dauphin, Centre, Union, Lancaster, Chester, and Delaware counties. Centre County is the home of Penn State University and Union the home of Bucknell University, the critical factors in his victories there. Obama did particularly poorly in Fayette County, where he got only 21 percent of the vote, and in the Anthracite Region, especially Luzerne and Lackawanna counties, where he did only slightly better. Gov. Rendell's endorsement of Clinton proved more important here than Sen. Bob Casey's endorsement of Obama.

Obama's strength in Dauphin County, home of Harrisburg, the state capital, was not surprising in one sense because of the signifiant black, Hispanic and Asian population here. But his strength crossed the Susquehanna River into mostly white Cumberland County, where he lost to Clinton by only 6 points. He was nearly as strong in many of the midstate counties, a spillover no doubt of the Harrisburg Patriot-News endorsement and his large campaign rallies in Harrisburg.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain carried all of the state's 67 counties and received 585,447 votes, or 72.7 percent of the total Republican vote. Congressman Ron Paul received 15.9 percent, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, still on the ballot despite dropping out of the race, received 11.4 percent. That McCain lost 27.3 percent of the vote in a nearly uncontested primary tells me that he is at significant risk if a viable third-party candidate emerges from the Republican religious right. That could be Ron Paul's reason for staying in the race and running radio ads attacking McCain during the primary campaign.

McCain failed to get 70 percent of the vote in 18 counties, including Dauphin. His worst was Juniata County, where he got 58.7 percent of the vote to 27.5 percent for Paul and 13.7 percent for Huckabee. Those kind of numbers suggest majority support, but with a significant disaffected minority that could throw the electoral votes of certain states to the Democratic nominee in a tight race if a strong third party candidate--such as Ron Paul--were to enter the fall campaign under, say, the Libertarian Party banner. It could be Ralph Nader all over again, but this time for the Republicans.

Pennsylvania turned out pretty much as I expected. Obama used his greater financial resources to greatly narrow the gap with Clinton in a state that should have been her's for the taking. On to Indiana for the next round in this bloody slugfest.

Posted by David at 05:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pennsylvania finally votes today on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and I expect my wife and I will walk the block to our polling place shortly after they open. Shipoke, our neighborhood, always has a healthy turn-out, so I don't anticipate greatly increased lines over what we normally have. The difference could be if people are so eager to vote that they all come before they go to work instead of waiting until they get home this afternoon.

Who will win? Probably Clinton. The polls consistently show her on top by 6 to 10 points. Turnout among the newly registered voters and those who switched from Republican to Democrat will be the key. Those are believed to be Obama voters by and large, or Republicans who wanted the opportunity to vote against their old nemesis, Mrs. Clinton.

This is a state that is comfortable with the old and the tired, suspicious of glittery new ideas no matter how attractive they might seem to others. We keep a state liquor store system here that is widely despised, and disallow the sale of six-packs of beer in supermarkets, drugstores, and convenience stores because of a general fear of change. Those who would change that system lose out to those who profit from the old ways and use fear of change to cripple attempts at reform. We can't directly order expensive wines from small California wineries--you must go through a cumbersome process controlled by the state Liquor Control Board--because fears were raised that teenagers would order $50 bottles of pinot noir by mail to evade the drinking age.

Yet it is also a state that produced a local boy federal judge, John Jones III, who listened to all the evidence and wrote a legal opinion banning so-called Intelligent Design--warmed over creationism--from the public schools. Jones was chairman of that same Liquor Control Board before he became a judge. Go figure.

I always tell people that Pennsylvania is "relentlessly moderate" in its politics, which is a function of its resistance to change. An Arlen Specter is right out of that tradition. A Rick Santorum is not, and he eventually was thrown out by voters tired of his rightwing extremism. It is a state tailor-made for Hillary Clinton. But it will probably shift its allegiances to Barack Obama in the general election, especially after voters really get to know John McCain and how much he is like-or worse than--George W. Bush, whom they twice rejected.

My prediction for today: Hillary by only five points, given the success of the Obama campaign in mobilizing new voters and getting them to the polls.

Posted by David at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pennsylvania finally votes today on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and I expect my wife and I will walk the block to our polling place shortly after they open. Shipoke, our neighborhood, always has a healthy turn-out, so I don't anticipate greatly increased lines over what we normally have. The difference could be if people are so eager to vote that they all come before they go to work instead of waiting until they get home this afternoon.

Who will win? Probably Clinton. The polls consistently show her on top by 6 to 10 points. Turnout among the newly registered voters and those who switched from Republican to Democrat will be the key. Those are believed to be Obama voters by and large, or Republicans who wanted the opportunity to vote against their old nemesis, Mrs. Clinton.

This is a state that is comfortable with the old and the tired, suspicious of glittery new ideas no matter how attractive they might seem to others. We keep a state liquor store system here that is widely despised, and disallow the sale of six-packs of beer in supermarkets, drugstores, and convenience stores because of a general fear of change. Those who would change that system lose out to those who profit from the old ways and use fear of change to cripple attempts at reform. We can't directly order expensive wines from small California wineries--you must go through a cumbersome process controlled by the state Liquor Control Board--because fears were raised that teenagers would order $50 bottles of pinot noir by mail to evade the drinking age.

Yet it is also a state that produced a local boy federal judge, John Jones III, who listened to all the evidence and wrote a legal opinion banning so-called Intelligent Design--warmed over creationism--from the public schools. Jones was chairman of that same Liquor Control Board before he became a judge. Go figure.

I always tell people that Pennsylvania is "relentlessly moderate" in its politics, which is a function of its resistance to change. An Arlen Specter is right out of that tradition. A Rick Santorum is not, and he eventually was thrown out by voters tired of his rightwing extremism. It is a state tailor-made for Hillary Clinton. But it will probably shift its allegiances to Barack Obama in the general election, especially after voters really get to know John McCain and how much he is like-or worse than--George W. Bush, whom they twice rejected.

My prediction for today: Hillary by only five points, given the success of the Obama campaign in mobilizing new voters and getting them to the polls.

Posted by David at 05:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An obviously exhausted Sen. Barack Obama made a dramatic appearance before a huge crowd last night in front of the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., the final stop on his whistlestop tour across eastern Pennsylvania on a chartered Amtrak train. The New York Times reported yesterday that people were waiting for hours at the planned stops along the Keystone Line. My wife asked me whose idea was the whistlestop tour, and I quipped, "Harry Truman." Whoever thought it up, it was a great campaign event.

We arrived around 6:15 and got right in, and were early enough to get standing positions along the "handshake line" that had been set up. The speaker's rostrum was down on Third Street, but Obama, accompanied by Sen. Bob Casey, came out of the Capitol's front door and down the cattle chute to the platform. The racially diverse crowd greeted him like a rock star, even a deity. He chose to do handshakes only on the other side of the cattle chute, a disappointment to my daughters, but at least they got to see him from close up.

The speech was tough on Hillary Clinton, tougher on John McCain, and really tough on George W. Bush and "my cousin" Dick Cheney, a humorous reference to the fact that some genealogist proved that Obama and Cheney are really distant cousins. Obama said Hillary would be a big improvement on Bush, but that that wasn't saying much because the bar was so low. He said America needed a President that wasn't wed to the past (my paraphrase), and that the lobbyist-dominated government that has occupied Washington for so long has to go.

I liked his comment about the need for "shared prosperity," how the fruits of the American economy should not flow only to a few wealthy people.

We walked home afterward, my younger daughter Lydia carrying the handmade "Pa. for Obama" sign that among a number of such signs (including the unfortunately misspelled, "Wokers for Obama" sign) handed out by the Obama campaign just before his arrival. A car full of young people waved, honked and yelled to her, which left her enormously pleased. We walked on, and a black man sitting on the steps of a church, possibly homeless, asked "Is it over?"

He meant the rally. The campaign will go on.

(Images in this blogpost (c) copyright 2008 by David DeKok)

Posted by David at 07:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sen. Barack Obama will conclude a daylong whistlestop tour of some of the communities along Amtrak's line between Philadelphia and Harrisburg with a rally at the state Capitol scheduled to begin at 8:45 p.m. Gates open at 6:30 p.m. This one is open to the public and no ticket is required.

Although the literature for the rally has referred to it being on the "South Steps" of the Capitol, there aren't any South Steps. I spoke to an Obama volunteer, who said the stage has been built on the West Steps facing the river. On Third Street, to be more more specific. He said anyone who isn't there when the gates open at 6:30 p.m. is unlikely to get anywhere close.

Posted by David at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama didn't do well in his televised debate in Philadelphia last night with Hillary Clinton. He did okay, and he didn't hurt himself, but Clinton had the upper hand through much of the evening. That may fan fears as to how well he will handle both Sen. John McCain and the expected rightwing "character" onslaught in the fall. You can expect a lot of what passed for debate last night to appear in McCain ads and "independent" ads from groups allied to McCain or the movement conservative cause.

ABC News has come in for some serious criticism for how its anchors--Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous--handed the event, namely their focus on titillating issues that are of little importance to picking the best candidate. We had a repeat of the "bitter small town" controversy, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, and even Obama's having shared room air with Bill Ayers, a long ago Weather Underground radical. I suspect less than one percent of the viewing audience even knew who Ayers was. I did, but I grew up in the 1960s and followed radical politics from a distance.

Obama supposedly was deliberately not mixing it up with Hillary, although he did get in a couple of zingers. He reminded viewers that Hillary, at the beginning of the first Clinton Administration, made a comment that many found as troublesome as the "bitter small towns" remark, namely the one about how she went off to be a lawyer rather than "stay home and bake cookies." And he pointed out, which I didn't know, that President Clinton had pardoned two former members of the SDS/Weather Underground.

These are distractions, folks. We need the candidates to address real issues, not respond to rightwing efforts to demonize people who fought for civil rights or an end to the Vietnam War forty years ago. McCain can't stop talking about Clinton's "earmark" of funds for the Woodstock Museum. I'm glad she tried to bring federal funds to that project. It sounds fascinating, and I'll take my family to visit it when it opens. So will a lot of other Americans. I'm sorry McCain missed Woodstock because he was a POW in North Vietnam, as he likes to point out. But let's be really frank here. What does getting shot down over Hanoi and spending time in prison really prove as far as your ability to be a good President?

But I digress. The polls, so far, show Clinton with an increasingly narrow edge over Obama in the Pennsylvania primary next Tuesday. Obama continues to lead Clinton by more than 10 points among all voters.

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It's been a good year for some on Wall Street. The New York Times reports today that John Paulson, a hedge fund manager, earned $3.7 billion--that's billion, not million--by shorting mortgage-based securities.

While I don't mind people making money--and the Times article cites several other hedge fund managers who did almost as well--I do object when they have to pay only 15 percent of their loot in federal income taxes. That's a rate reserved for the working poor, and, it seems, hedge fund managers, thanks to a loophole in the tax laws. They make a percentage of what the hedge fund earns, and because those earnings are capital gains, they are taxed at 15 percent instead of the 35 percent rate someone with that much income would normally have to pay.

Nice work if you can get it. Because George W. Bush has greatly reduced the taxes on millionaires (and John McCain wants to cut them even further), there isn't money for national health care, better schools, and everything else a progressive, modern society ought to have.

I'm not saying we should necessarily return to the 90 percent marginal tax rate in effect between 1950 and 1963, when it was cut by the Kennedy Administration to 77 percent and by Lyndon Johnson in 1965 to 70 percent, where it stayed until the early 1980s. That 70 percent figure seems about right for the wealthy. And remember, the late 1960s were a boom time for U.S. workers. Higher taxes aren't always a bad thing.

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When I heard Mitt Romney on CNN this morning touting Sen. John McCain's economic plan, I figured it would be more of the same nonsense we've endured from Bush for the last seven years. Sorry to say, I was right. Sen. "Straight Talk" McCain , who once criticized Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, said in Pittsburgh that he now wants them made permanent, plus he has a couple new ones of his own to further drain revenue from the federal government. This is far less about economic stimulus than in continuing the 25-year battle of movement conservatives to "starve the beast," meaning starving the federal government of tax revenue so it can't offer programs to help people--only imprison or kill them.

McCain wants the corporate tax rate cut from 35 percent to 25 percent. He rightfully pointed out that the current U.S. corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the industrialized world, but failed to point out that higher sales taxes and personal income taxes allow those European countries he's talking about to pull in the revenue they need to offer the government services, including health care, that a modern, civilized nation needs to provide for its citizens. McCain doesn't say how that revenue loss would be made up, other than a vague promise to end corporate tax breaks. Good luck with that. A corporate tax cut won't create jobs, especially in a pre-recession period when all businesses are becoming nervous and cautious. The extra revenue corporations get from a tax cut would likely flow in large part to wealthy shareholders and hedge funds in the form of higher dividends and stock buy-backs.

For the middle class, McCain offers a doubling of the dependent tax exemption from $3,500 to $7,000. That would be worth an additional $875 off your taxes if you're in the 25 percent bracket, considerably less if you are in the 15 percent or 10 percent bracket. For the well-off, McCain promises an end to the alternative minimum tax. The AMT does need to be indexed for inflation, but to abolish it would mean that well-off taxpayers with lots of write-offs, creative or not, could end up paying very little in taxes. That was why Congress created the AMT in the first place, to ensure tax equity.

Then there's the gas tax gimmick. McCain proposes suspending the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gasoline tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This would reduce the price of a gallon of regular--assuming the distributor didn't raise wholesale prices to grab some of this--from $3.37 to $3.18 or so. Wow. Get your motors running! Just avoid those crumbling bridges and deteriorating highways.

I'm not sure what to make of McCain's comments on ending the current system of unemployment compensation. He disparaged the current system as "something from the 1950s" and called for more job training--which is only of value if your small town has any jobs to be retrained for. But don't get bitter!. You must maintain a positive outlook. That's the law. Basicly, he seemed to be saying that he doesn't want the unemployed waiting around for jobs that "aren't coming back." He also talked about creating some sort of individual fund that laid-off workers could tap, but gave no details. Would you have the choice of using it to pay bills or pay for job training? One or the other? This sounds ominously like another movement conservative fantasy--eliminating the unemployment taxes paid by businesses. But don't worry--we'll retrain you for another job. Take spatula, flip burger...

What the U.S. needs to get out of this looming recession is a strong federal program of public works spending--God knows there's lots of crumbling infrastructure to rebuild. Something like Jimmy Carter's CETA program from 1976 would put even more people back to work. The federal government, in other words, needs to do something, not sit around and wait for the supposed glories of the free market to fix everything. It never has before--why should it now?

Posted by David at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I suppose every politician is entitled to one dumb comment during a campaign, and Obama's comment about the "bitter" voters in small-town Pennsylvania--secretly recorded by a blogger who somehow got into an event closed to the press- is his. Even if it is quite true.

Here's what he said:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

If he'd just stuck to the last two--anti-immigrant and anti-trade sentiment--it might not have been an issue. Think of Hazleton, Pa., and its anti-immigrant mayor, and think of just about any union rally in the state you ever might have attended. But guns and religion? He was probably thinking about diehard National Rifle Association members and their sometimes paranoid beliefs, not recreational hunters who are quite happy to purchase one gun per lifetime rather than per month. Or he may have recalled Thomas Franks' book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", in which the author talks about how people in Kansas were convinced by rightwing politicians and fundamentalist preachers that "moral" values were more important than good jobs and benefits.

Whatever. I lived in one of those Pennsylvania small towns, Shamokin, for 12 years and can tell you that folks there harbor a lot of anger when it comes to their lousy economic situation. More than a few people fervently believed that the local Chamber of Commerce worked to keep jobs out of Shamokin so as not to push up wages at their own businesses. When people seek to explain the unexplainable, they often turn to conspiracy theories.

I watched a little bit of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at the Compassion Forum at Messiah College last night (some rare favorable press for the school). Clinton was so boring and churchy that I nearly turned it off. Obama was far more engaging, but I still abandoned him at 9 p.m. for "The Tudors" on Showtime, my current guilty pleasure. But I did TiVo the whole thing, so I can finish watching him tomorrow as the final week of campaigning for the Pennsylvania Primary begins.

Posted by David at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An editorial in the New York Times today accuses the Bush Administration of a "relentless antipathy" to effective government. The case in point was the 2010 census, which has joined the long list of government agencies and programs saddled with screamingly incompetent administrators. But while this mess could result in a less accurate census--a Republican dream, because it could deny Democratic states seats in Congress--it won't likely kill anybody.

The same can't be said for another current mess involving airline safety. Federal Aviation Administration supervisors have been accused by witnesses under oath of "harassing and threatening" inspectors who tried to do their job regarding Southwest Airlines. Then it became clear that FAA inspectors at other airlines also may not have done their jobs, resulting in chaos after the airlines were ordered to pull airplanes out of service to make sure they weren't flying deathtraps.

There is short-term profit for airlines in ignoring maintenance, and because of that, strict oversight by the FAA should be a given. We have been lucky that one of these planes hasn't crashed and carried dozens of people to their deaths. Remember that "relentless antipathy" to effective government the next time you board a plane and consider if this is the way you want America to be.

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Politico.com reports that Obama isn't likely to get the kind of voting surge among Pennsylvania college students that he did in Iowa. Although there are numerous "Students for Barack Obama" chapters at the state's 159 colleges, many students are registered in their home states. Which is too bad, because Pennsylvania has a whopping 680,000 college students.

In Iowa, students could sign up to vote the day of the caucuses and could choose which party's caucuses they wanted to be a part of. In Pennsylvania, we have party registration and closed primaries. There are arguments pro and con for this approach, but it does prevent a boatload of new supporters of a candidate from crashing the vote.

Back in the day, I was co-founder of Students for McGovern at Hope College and campaigned for him during the run-up to the Michigan Democratic Primary. This was about as hopeless a quest as you could take on in soundly-Republican Holland, Michigan. But we had a lot of fund and learned a lot. I ran as a precinct delegate and won, which eventually got me to the state Democratic convention as a McGovern delegate. And I still admire Sen. McGovern. Can't argue this fact: he would have been way better than Richard Nixon.

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Today is another one of those doleful anniversaries we face this year, 40 years after the tumultous events of 1968. On April 4 that year in Memphis, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated by a sniper in Memphis while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. King, America's most important civil rights leader, had gone to Memphis to support the city's striking sanitation workers, who were so poorly paid that most qualified for welfare.

King was probably slain by James Earl Ray, an escapee from a Missouri prison where he was serving a 20-year sentence. Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder to avoid a death sentence. He recanted his confession three days later, but off to prison he went and no trial was ever held. To believe he was not the killer you would have to believe a lot of other things, including that he was a patsy in a massive conspiracy to kill King hatched by parties unknown. But enough doubt remains that you can at least wonder about the case without being labeled a complete loon.

Living in Holland, Michigan, which at the time was an overwhelmingly white (with a smattering of Mexicans) town of 25,000, I didn't experience firsthand the riots that broke out across the nation after King's death. They were stories in the newspaper, not something happening close by. I don't recall anything in particular happening at school, either. No assemblies, certainly. My civics teacher might have mentioned it.

King has come into focus for whites more in the 40 years after his death than he ever did during his years at the helm of the Civil Rights movement. For many, that is summed up in, "I have a dream," a good speech that did not convey the totality of King's life and revolutionary beliefs. To the white power structure in the 1960s, King was one scary n--------can't say that word, of course. No one gets assassinated just for a speech like, "I have a dream."

Barack Obama is the closest thing we have today to a Martin Luther King. In truth, just as he has both black and white blood, he has some of the best qualities of King and Bobby Kennedy, the next of the doleful anniversaries we will remember this year. What I hope is that Obama also can channel the best of President Lyndon B. Johnson--not the warmaking Johnson who let the Vietnam War grow out of control, but the master legislative tactician who gave us the 1958 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts and much progressive, Great Society legislation.

March 31 was the anniversary of Johnson's televised speech to the nation in 1968 announcing that he would not seek renomination for another term as President. You can read it here. I had never seen it in print and had forgotten how long it was, and of course the punch line doesn't come until the end. It is a fascinating historical document--among its gems is Johnson's reminder that real average income for Americans grew 30 percent during the seven years of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Seems like paradise compared to the last seven years here.

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Just when Messiah College alumnus-from-hell and ex-West Shore Country Club lifeguard Monica Goodling ("Monica who?") was slipping off the public radar screen, along comes NPR to drag the pride of central Pennsylvania back into the national spotlight.

NPR reported today that the Justice Department Inspector General is investigating whether Goodling, then a senior counsel in the Justice Department, forced out attorney Leslie Hagen after hearing rumors she was a lesbian. Hagen had outstanding job evaluations and is said to be a loyal Republican, but that apparently wasn't enough for Goodling. So on a day when she didn't have any disloyal U.S. Attorneys to fire, out went Hagen, or so the story goes.

Which will surely distress an acquaintance of mine on the Messiah faculty who expressed hope not long ago that the world had seen the last of Ms. Goodling.

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Thanks in large part to her Bosnia sniper gaffe and the endorsement of her opponent by Sen. Bob Casey, Hillary Clinton's lead over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania has shrunk to 5 points in one new poll.

A Rasmussen Poll out yesterday shows Clinton with 47 percent, Obama with 42 percent, and 11 percent undecided. Not all polls show the same thing, but Rasmussen had Hillary up by 10 points last week and 13 points the week before. Pennsylvania holds its primary on April 22.

Some in the public have offered up Casey as a possible running mate for Obama, which I have to admit I hadn't considered but which makes a certain amount of sense. Casey is beloved by traditional white Democrats and has strong credentials on the abortion issue that could help insulate Obama to a certain extent on that issue.

Gov. Ed Rendell is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, but I'm told that not everyone else in his administration or the Pennsylvania Democratic Party organization feels the same way. Rendell, who seems to get up every day and ask himself, "what more can I do to be considered a Democrat-in-Name-Only (DINO)?" this week proclaimed that Democrat-hating Fox News was the "fairest" of the TV news operations. This is make-your-head-explode stuff, almost as bad as Hillary cozying up to rightwing hatemonger Richard Mellon Scaife last week.

It was so over the top that Keith Olbermann of MSNBC gave Rendell his daily "Worst Person in the World" dunce cap.

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