CHILDREN ARE THE LIVING MESSAGES

We send to a time...

That we will not see.

~John W. Whitehead~

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Sen.Obama's huge win in Mississippi eliminated the popular vote gain Hillary Clinton made in Texas. He again leads by some 700,000 votes. He again proved capable of a huge win in a smaller state that swamped Clinton's victory margin in a larger state. Had the Clinton team had the money and strategic smarts to hold their defeats in the Potomac Primaries to margins of even 15%, this would be an entirely different campaign. However, when Obama wins states, Clinton also often loses them. Should Sen. Obama win this nomination, the Potomac Primaries will be remembered as the turning point.

The question, now, is whether Sen. Clinton can make up that 700,000 popular vote deficit, in order to have any credible claim to the nomination. The polls in Pennsylvania continue to give her a wide lead, and the state is even more demographically favorable to her than was Ohio; and given that, her ten-point win in Ohio was worth a popular vote gain of nearly 230,000 votes, a similar win in Pennsylvania would be worth even more. A margin of 300,000 seems very possible. Her only chance of overcoming that final 400,000 would seem to reside in her breaking roughly even in the remaining scheduled states, while winning big in Florida and Michigan revotes. As has been clear for some time, her only chance to take a credible popular vote lead depends on Florida and Michigan. The previous votes in those states will never be considered credible. Revotes are the only answer.

The Obama camp is hedging on revotes. In fact, they are now resorting to legal arguments, and very understandably would prefer that the delegate slates be simply split between the two candidates. The latter will not happen. The Clinton camp would prefer the previous elections be validated, but they are open to revotes, as an alternative. The former will not happen. So, the only fair resolution being revotes, we now see the campaigns articulating clear stances: Clinton would prefer that there be no revotes, but is open to the idea; Obama would prefer that there be no revotes, and seems willing to try to block them. As Big Tent Democrat makes clear, that position will be hard to defend. Were I as manipulative as some big name bloggers on some big name sites, I would claim that Obama doesn't think Florida and Michigan voters are relevant; but of course, he does think they're relevant, he's just worried about the results of their votes. This is nothing more than politics-as-usual, and it should not be spun as anything else.

Should Florida revote, it is likely that Clinton will match or beat her previous victory margin, thus slicing Obama's popular vote lead to roughly 100,000 votes. The question would then be whether she could win Michigan by that much. Her huge margin in the previous vote cannot be taken as measure, and the only recent poll, by Rasmussen, shows Clinton and Obama tied. Many, however, feel the demographics would favor Clinton. Nevertheless, would they favor her enough to give her a margin that would put her over the top, in total popular votes? There is only one way to find out.

Of course, none of this may matter. Clinton may win by such large margins in Pennsylvania and Florida that all she will need is a slight win in Michigan. Obama may close in those two states, and make it impossible for the Michigan margin to matter. He might clean up in Indiana and some of the other remaining states, also making his popular vote lead unassailable. On the other hand, she might do well in the remaining states. However, what is still clear and obvious is the necessity of resolving Florida and Michigan. Clinton is not going to get the current delegate slates. Obama cannot block revotes without blowing his chances of winning in November. A revote plan is being developed, and it should be implemented.

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I just would like to inform my colleagues at Journal Home and all visitors that I have improved my website with new software. First from Sunlight Labs, I have added Popup Politicians™. You may notice after a politician’s name you will see a sun logo if you bring your cursor over it a small popup with the congressperson's or Senator’s bio and you will have links that will provide a wealth of information on that particular politician mentioned. I just thought it was a useful tool to help my visitors be well informed on political candidates and better able to have valuable information on a particular candidate they plan to vote for.

Here is an example Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama Where you see the Sun Logo Rep. Nancy Pelosi just put your cursor over it.

The second feature I added is from answers.com if you doubleclick on any word it will open a mini popup box and provide spelling, meaning and word etmology, for a proper place or thing or famous person it will provide a bio.

In any event I hope you enjoy the newly added features to make visiting my site a rewarding and pleasant experience. Also I added many interesting interactive features on the right side of my blog site please feel free to enjoy and comment on them if you so choose.

Thank you for your time.

THE ANGEL OF LOVE   May love be... The Angel that watches over you!   May joy... Be your very best friend~   May wonder always find its place in your mind   And may happiness brighten all your days without end.

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Barack Obama speaks eloquently of change. Nowhere is change more needed than in healthcare. By 2017, one dollar out of every five spent in America will go toward healthcare costs according to a report in Health Affairs.

For this high cost, surely Americans are getting excellent quality, are they not? Sadly, the answer is no.  By any one of many measures of quality, the US healthcare system is not performing well. A recent study from the Commonwealth Foundation found,

"The US healthcare system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives."

This wildly expanding cost is unsustainable. Likewise, it is an international embarrassment to spend so much and yet perform so poorly on basic health scores. Everyone agrees that something has to be done but the real question is what?

One wonders what Barack Obama might do to meet this crisis. He claims that his plan will increase quality; provide coverage for everyone, and save money. Sounds like a classic case of having your cake and eating it, too. Looking closer, maybe he has uncovered some previously overlooked principles that might be used to untie this Gordian knot. So what specifically is he proposing to do?

Unfortunately, his healthcare plan is strong on vision but light on specific details. The best that can be discerned is a general outline that offers much promise but does not deal with any prickly details that might offend voters.  By connecting the dots we can start to see what Obama is likely to do for healthcare. Looking at the different components of his plan, we can postulate an answer to the feasibility of his plan.

The one element of Obama's plan that is crystal clear is his call for major expansion of the government's role in controlling healthcare. The central proposition he makes is that the government can intervene to improve the quality of healthcare provided in the US. Clearly, quality improvement should be a major goal for healthcare reform. Obama's plan does not disappoint on this promise. He claims that he will improve patient care by requiring doctors and hospitals to prove they provide quality care. His plan would link payment with reported quality. This implies that poor quality must be the provider's fault.

To implement this plan, an army of new bureaucrats must be hired by the government to keep a watchful eye on the doctors and hospitals to ensure quality. Healthcare providers will have to hire larger staffs to collect and report this data adding more cost to the system.  As these new structures evolve, the law of averages will prevail and the actual care will migrate to a median level of quality. The net result will be little improvement in care, and significant increase in the cost. High administrative overhead already is a major problem in our current system. A New England Journal of Medicine article stated that U.S. healthcare administrative overhead is twice that of the Canadian system. These researchers found that 31% of health care expenditures in the US went for administrative costs. Obama advocates that we increase this overhead further with no clear indication that quality will improve.

Obama's plan also calls for a ten billion dollar federal investment in healthcare information technology over five years. He purports this will improve quality and save money. Will it? The data suggests otherwise. A study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine showed information technology did not make a quality difference. Comparing practices that used an electronic medical record with those that did not, investigators found no difference in 14 quality measures, improvement in 2 outcome measures, and a worse outcome on 1 measure. This is hardly a sweeping endorsement. Incorporating such expensive and unproven methods within his plan is flippant.  It demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issue at hand.

The Obama healthcare plan also calls for expansion of the number of American people with health insurance coverage. While certainly a laudable goal, he does not explain how to pay for this.  He also claims to offer solutions to the broken health insurance industry by limiting catastrophic losses and lowering insurance costs through competition. To quote Obama's website:

"His plan will force insurers to pay out a reasonable share of their premiums for patient care instead of keeping exorbitant amounts for profits and administration. His new National Health Exchange will help increase competition by insurers."

To sum up this part of Obama's plan, he intends to create another bureaucracy to regulate the health insurance industry. The language used here is particularly interesting. He will force insurance companies to use more premiums for patient care. How will a for-profit corporation respond to such heavy-handed coercion from the federal government? 

Barack Obama talks a lot about change in his campaign. Healthcare reform offers him the chance to put that rhetoric into action. Unfortunately, all his plan does is offer empty talk and shallow ideas.  Senator Obama, are you serious about change? If so, please show us some substance in your healthcare plan

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After watching debates, hearing his speeches, and reading Obama's policy visions, many questions remain about how he'd change America.  We'd like to see some shot-from-the-hip questions with a few straight answers before we commit to all that hope from a mere mortal, and all that hazy change. Here are just six questions for Obama we hope the MSM will ask him, for a change.

Issue 1: New Brand of Politics

Senator Obama, you promise a new brand of politics to replace the old politics of special interests and lobbyists.  One step to fulfill that pledge would be to complete the 2008 Political Courage Test offered by Project Vote Smart, a lengthy questionnaire that asks you to formally state your precise positions on many national issues of the utmost concern to voters.  Yet, according to the Project Vote Smart website,

"Senator Barack H. Obama Jr. repeatedly refused to provide any responses to citizens on the issues through the 2008 Political Courage Test when asked to do so by national leaders of the political parties, prominent members of the media, Project Vote Smart President Richard Kimball, and Project Vote Smart staff."   

Project Vote Smart and its Political Courage Test exemplify the type of bipartisan effort that you claim to support.  According to the organization's history: 

"We are scrupulously non-partisan -- our founding board, headed by former presidents Carter and [until his death] Ford, is carefully balanced, and we do not lobby, support or oppose any candidate, issue or cause. To protect the independence and integrity of this Voter's Self-Defense System of information, Project Vote Smart does not accept funding from government or corporate sources, or any special interest group that lobbies. Our sources of support are entirely individual memberships and foundation grants."

Question:

• Why would Americans trust someone who promises "change," but who does not trust Americans enough to tell them exactly to what kind of change he is committed? 

Issue 2: Education

One goal of your comprehensive education plan for Pre-K to 12 is to "recruit, support, and reward teachers and principals to ensure that every school in America is filled with outstanding educators."  You advocate "paying teachers as professionals."  According to the National Education Association (NEA) the average teacher's salary in 2005-2006 was $49,026; California has the highest pay at $59,825.   

Questions:

1. What will be the role, and cost, of the Federal Government's new direct and indirect involvement in recruiting teachers? 
2. What do you propose be the new, elevated national average teacher's salary?
3. What will be the proportional funding of that increase as sustained by local, country, state, and federal taxing entities? 
4. What will be the expected increase in federal employment headcount required to establish and maintain the new educational initiatives you propose?

Issue 3:  National Defense

Senator Obama, as you know, providing for the common defense of the United States is one of the very few Constitutional requirements placed upon the federal government.  Yet, in your Blueprint for Change, out of a list of 15 separate campaign pledges, you list "foreign policy" and "veterans" at the very bottom of the list.  At the top of your list, you include "ethics," "healthcare," "seniors," "women," "poverty," and "service," among others.  Yet, none of these items can be found in our Constitution.   

Questions:

1. Do you intend, if you are elected President, to protect and defend these United States of America from all enemies foreign and domestic?
2. If your answer is, "yes," will you conscientiously follow your own Blueprint, which implies that you sincerely believe diplomacy to be the best tool for our national defense?
3. You have said, "The United States is trapped by the Bush-Cheney approach to diplomacy that refuses to talk to leaders we don't like.  Not talking doesn't make us look tough - it makes us look arrogant."  Is it your contention, Senator Obama, that the only possible valid reason our current President could have for not sitting down and talking with the Iranians is that we don't like them? 

Issue 4: Afghanistan

In the Ohio debate, you stated , "I have been very clear in talking to the American people about what I would do with respect to Afghanistan.  I think we have to have more troops there to bolster the NATO effort."  You also stated that, "...Secretary Gates, our current Defense secretary, indicated that we are getting resistance from our allies to put more troops into Afghanistan because they continue to believe that we made a blunder in Iraq."   Yet, in a January 19, 2007 speech, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, speaking about the NATO mission in Afghanistan, said,

"The Afghan National Army is doing better and better. As we speak four million refugees have gone back to Afghanistan. Health care is up. Child mortality is down. Two-thirds of the villages in Afghanistan have received development projects worth up to $50,000. The average income of the Afghan has doubled since 2001. The currency is stable. Fourteen new banks are competing with each other. Three million Afghans have mobile phones. Forty percent of the Afghan land seeded with mines has been brought back into use.  In other words, if you look at 2001 and if you look at the beginning of 2008 a lot has happened and a lot of progress has been made...The problem is that we, the international community, we have no patience."

In addition, Scheffer recently noted that NATO sent an additional 8,000 troops to Afghanistan in 2007.  In fact, France and Norway are reported preparing to send troops to participate more aggressively in the NATO mission.

Questions:

1. If you're elected President, how may more U.S. troops will you send to Afghanistan? 
2. At the tactical level, you were against the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq.  Today, though, you favor a surge in Afghanistan for a similar tactical mission.  Is this a contradiction?
3. In the Ohio debate you acknowledged that, as chairman of Senate subcommittee dealing with Afghanistan since the beginning of 2007, you have not yet called an oversight hearing.  If this issue is so important, how do you justify that?

Issue 5:  Abortion

Senator Obama, you've told church audiences that you're personally opposed to abortion on religious grounds, but that you feel the necessity, within a pluralistic society, of supporting the legality of a "woman's right to choose."  However, on the 35^th anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision, you issued a statement, which seems to promise more enthusiastic action regarding abortion.  In this statement, you boast that you have been a "consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL." 

You call a woman's access to abortion-on-demand, including partial-birth abortions, a "fundamental right" that is part and parcel of your plans for "justice."  And, you promise that as President, you will "pass the Freedom of Choice Act," which enshrines into law absolute access to all abortions up to the moment of live delivery.  You've even opposed Infants Born Alive legislation in Illinois that would protect the life of an infant born breathing, despite the efforts to murder him.

Questions:

1. Do you not consider Planned Parenthood, the number one provider of abortions in the United States, and also a recipient of millions of tax dollars every year, to be a "special-interest lobby" of the very kind which you consistently denounce?
2. If you are personally opposed to abortion, why do you feel it necessary to promise to bolster and fight for what you term, "reproductive justice"?
3. How does our failure as a society to protect the life of an innocent, even one born "inadvertently," define any sort of justice at all?

Issue 6: Poverty

Part of your Plan to Combat Poverty is to "create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in cities across the nation that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement."  You cite the Harlem's Children's Zone (HCZ) as the model.  In a 2006 interview aired on CBS News,  HCZ's founder, Geoffrey Canada (watch his Oprah interview here) described how the HCZ educates 10,000 children on an annual budget of $36 million, of which a third comes from government and the rest from private donations.  In the CBS interview, Canada stated that, "We could not run a school under the current rules and regulations with the unions. It's impossible.  It's just impossible. You can't fire teachers.  Look, we fired three teachers last year.  We fired more teachers than the whole island of Manhattan in all the public schools."  Clearly, the HCZ is an example of what one highly-motivated entrepreneur can accomplish with private donations supplemented by government assistance.

Questions:

1. Your plan calls for the federal government to initiate similar "zones" and provide half of the funding, with the rest coming from philanthropies and businesses.  Isn't this a fundamentally different model than the HCZ?    
2. Canada is outspoken about how teacher unions are a hindrance to the type of inner city approach to education that makes the HCZ successful.  How would you overcome that hindrance?
3. How would your administration convince philanthropies and businesses that investing in a government social program would be as cost effective and offer the same accountability as investing in a NGO?

Conclusion

It's time to ratchet up the intensity level of media questions to Senator Obama.  The MSM inquiry has, to date, been more like a Miss America Contest interview than the thorough vetting of a presidential candidate. His puffy responses to debate questions have been accepted at face value.  And, among the remaining presidential candidates, he has been the least accessible to the press corps.  It's time, now, for reporters to start asking Obama serious questions, as befits serious journalists. I am so outta here...later! Feel free to comment if you so desire.

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THE CLINTON'S BAGGAGE

Family and Medical Leave

Balanced Budget for the first time in a hundred years (or two)

Budget surplus after an enormous deficit left by Republicans

Improved our image in the World community through positive regard

World peacemaker and the world a better place than they found it

Created 20 million good jobs for America

Repaired the welfare system so people weren't thrown off after two years

Told the IRS to get more user friendly

Put 100,000 more police on the streets and reduced crime

Drove tobacco money out of politics, schools and their advertising away from children.

Brokered Peace in Northern Ireland and Serbia

TRIED to provide Universal Healthcare and ran into pharmaceutical lobby and a Democratic congress that refused Hillary's FREE HELP -

Created laws that prohibit government employees from becoming lobbyists the day after they leave office

Created the ethics rules that keep DC folks honest to, well, some degree.


Oh, yes, the Clinton's have baggage.

And aren't we the luckier for it?

How quickly American's forget. Thankless bunch.



BARACK OBAMA

14 MONTHS ON THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

NOT ONE MEETING

AND AFGHANISTAN IS STILL WAITING FOR "CHANGE"

OBAMA SAYS: HE WAS "TOO BUSY" -- WITH HIS OWN LIFE

HE CAN GO BACK TO IT.

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I hope the Obama supporters are paying attention. The media is finally starting to scrutinize him and I hope it is not too little too late. First off, there are his ties to the Nation of Islam leader, Farrakhan In the debate last week he was asked if he would reject Farrakhan's endorsement. Barack tried to skirt the issue by saying he repudiated Farrakhan's anti-Semitic stance. He did not take a real stand on this until Hillary pushed the issue. This should be disconcerting to any American. Farrakhan is racist against the entire White race.
Why Barack did not take an instantaneous stand when given the chance is reason for concern.
If you look at the transcript of the debate, you will see how long he tried to skirt the issue and not consign to totally rejecting this racist.
Second, in trying to boast his experience he mentioned that he was on the subcommittee for examining what can be done regarding Afghanistan. He continues to use this in reference to his experience and even has the audacity to publicize it in his new ad.
Hillary pointed out that although He did head the committee he had not held one meeting on that committee in the 13 months he has been on it.
His answer was, He was too busy running for the nomination.
He said in clear terms, he was too busy running for a new position to fulfill the obligation of a current position.
That also should be troubling.
Then there are his ties to Rezko who donated money to his campaign helped him buy his home and all the while this man was under investigation and Obama knew this. This man is now in jail waiting to stand trial.
These are just a few of the issues that if you are an Obama supporter you should be taking into consideration.
Remember Obama says he is the candidate of integrity, and hope and change.
I think it is very scary that we are just starting to get information about his background this far into the Presidential Primary.

People who have no information to share just seem to sling insults or make things up.

During the Clinton Administration, 80 Million dollars in taxpayer money spent by Ken Starr to investigate the Clintons. All they could find to try to get him out of the white house was Monica Lewinsky... I think that all of this just goes to show that the Clintons have been under attack by the Republican Party for a very long time and yet after 80 Million dollars all they could finally do was try to destroy them based on a very personal problem, which had nothing to do with his performance as our President.

Think about this, If we spend 80 Million dollars of taxpayer money to investigate Barack Obama, what might we find out?

I am not ready to take a chance handing over the Countries highest office to a man we know so little about.

I read this article and thought it was extremely informative.

Remember Barack Obama says he will be different.

From Boston.com By Scott Helman, Globe Staff | August 9, 2007

But behind Obama's campaign rhetoric, about taking on special interests, lies a more complicated truth. A Globe review of Obama's campaign finance records shows that he collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from lobbyists and PACs as a state legislator in Illinois, a US senator, and a presidential aspirant.
In Obama's eight years in the Illinois Senate, from 1996 to 2004, almost two-thirds of the money he raised for his campaigns -- $296,000 of $461,000 -- came from PACs, corporate contributions, or unions, according to Illinois Board of Elections records. He tapped financial services firms, real estate developers, healthcare providers, oil companies, and many other corporate interests, the records show.
Obama's US Senate campaign committee, starting with his successful run in 2004, has collected $128,000 from lobbyists and $1.3 million from PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks money in politics. His $1.3 million from PACs represents 8 percent of what he has raised overall. Clinton's Senate committee, by comparison, has raised $3 million from PACs, 4 percent of her total amount raised, the group said.
In addition, Obama's own federal PAC, Hopefund, took in $115,000 from 56 PACs in the 2005-2006 election cycle out of $4.4 million the PAC raised, according to CQ MoneyLine, which collects Federal Election Commission data. Obama then used those PAC contributions -- including thousands from defense contractors, law firms, and the securities and insurance industries -- to build support for his presidential run by donating to Democratic Party organizations and candidates around the country.

Can we all wake up about the little known messiah Obama?

I’m outta here!

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This was the entrance of television into the political arena. It was quite literally the dawn of a new era where politics and pop culture seemingly merged into one. The presidents that followed would be actors (Ronald Regan), cowboys (George W. Bush [so he claims]), and lady’s men (William Jefferson Clinton). They were all, for the most part: good looking, svelte, and commanding. Since 1960, the media, specifically television, has gone from being a part of the political conversation to moderating it. News has gone from being broadcast three times a day to 24 hours a day, and the American public’s appetite for the sensational story has grown even as our need to be entertained has become more sophisticated. Now, enter Obama and Hillary.

However, after the first vote in Iowa, Hillary was not the frontrunner, consequently the media declared a new one " Sen. Barack Obama. Since Iowa, Obama’s momentum has been building. However, momentum relies on media presence. Moreover, right now the media favors Obama. Every major Texas newspaper endorses him and his picture seems permanently plastered to the front page. In an effort to make up for their prior, apparently incorrect, prediction that Hillary was the presumptive nominee, newspapers are rushing to criticize her and falling over backwards to praise him. It is as if we are expected to forget that in January Hillary won the endorsements of media giants like the Des Moines Register and the New York Times.

Of course, Obama has had his share of negative coverage (See: http://mediamatters.org/items/200802190002, where during a February 18 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball a picture of Osama Bin Laden appeared while host Chris Matthews was discussing Sen. Barack Obama ) " no politician is immune. Nevertheless, the attacks against Hillary Clinton seem much more personal.

Perhaps it’s because our society doesn’t value the beauty of women over a certain age. How many major male news anchors over 50 can you name? Now name the women. (Can you name any major female news  anchors, at all?) In their book, Social Problems 9^th ed.(2003), sociologists D. Stanley Eitzen and Maxine Baca Zinn point-out that women only hold 15 percent of the executive positions at U.S. newspapers despite comprising one-third of the workforce. They also point to the fact that in “1998 women only reported 19 percent of all stories on network evening news programs”(Eitzen & Zinn, 258).

And what of the critique of Hillary’s facial expressions?  Men are not criticized on such grounds [1], but it’s not because they don’t make funny faces. I have been less than 5ft away from Obama, taking pictures during one of his speeches, and let me tell you, he makes some ridiculous facial expressions.

 Ours is an age where a politician’s cleavage is still an appropriate headline. Take the Washington Post’s July 20, 2007 article which discussed a black v-neck top Hillary had worn on the Senate floor. The headline read: “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory”.

(See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902668.html). To add insult to injury, the article spawned cleavage coverage all over the national news. Media Matters for America even reports that "MSNBC devoted a total of 23 minutes and 42 seconds to segments discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) 'cleavage'." (See: http://mediamatters.org/items/200708010003?f=s_search). Then, during NBC’s July 29 edition of Meet the Press, John Harwood, the CNBC chief Washington correspondent defended the Washington Post article by blaming Hillary:  

            “HARWOOD:  I’m going to defend that column too. When you look at the calculation that goes into                               everything that Hillary Clinton does, for her to argue that she was not aware of what she was                               communicating by her dress is like Barry Bonds saying he thought he was rubbing down with    

             flaxseed oil, OK?”(See: http://mediamatters.org/items/200707290003?f=s_search)

             (Accord: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20024553/page/5/).

            Ours is an age where Virginia women I’ve spoken with state to me that they refuse to vote for Hillary because “she couldn’t hold onto her man”.  Where the President of NBC News asks if it seems like “Chelsea [Clinton] is being “pimped out” and an age where, during Imus In The Morning, it is suggested that she [Chelsea Clinton]“have sex with” delegates to aid her mother’s campaign.

(See: http://mediamatters.org/items/200802140018)

            Ours is an age where people like Rush Limbaugh use name-calling and cruel taunting to punish women who’ve suffered the tragedy of their husband’s affairs, like when Limbaugh called Hillary “the most cheated-on woman in the world”. (See:  http://mediamatters.org/items/200801240014). Ours is an age  These comments by the media, paired with the daily visual reminders of “young, tall, handsome”; compared to “old, shrill, shrewd” have made this campaign a competition for who looks more presidential " and in that competition a man will always win. 

            It seems likely that the media based Hillary’s former “front-runner” status on her record, which boasts far more experience than Sen. Obama’s, and didn’t factor into their polling the notion that voting for a woman is a hypothetical until the ballots are cast. In order for Americans to have  a real shot at electing the best candidate, as opposed to the candidate that looks the most presidential, the media must stop calling attention to sexist (and racist) stereotypes and start focusing on platforms and voting records.  Let the televised charisma monopolize our hearts, but let the media remind our minds that there is more to being a president than words and bringing people together.

One more item I would like to touch on as being unfair to Senator Hillary Clinton is that when she may be behind Obama in a state poll but within the margin of error, it is always referred to as a lead for Senator Obama. When Senator Obama trails Senator Clinton but within the margin of error it is always referred to as a statistical dead heat, if that alone does not point out just how biased the media is in favor of Senator Obama then I don’t know what will