Month: January 2008

Rudy’s ad campaign just got weirder.

A woman whose very presence in the US is against the law:

 Tatu Msangi, a nurse and single mother from Tanzania: Tatu Msangi is a 35-year-old single mother from Tanzania.  When Tatu became pregnant, she went to the antenatal clinic at KCMC and discovered she was HIV-positive.  Tatu enrolled in a Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) program and delivered a healthy daughter, named Faith.  As part of her treatment, Faith received a dose of nevirapine after she was born.  She is now over two years old, and she is HIV-free.  As part of her work at KCMC, Tatu counsels HIV-positive women and encourages them to participate in the PMTCT program.  KCMC is supported by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) through the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation.  Tatu and her daughter Faith are examples of the hope and compassion that is transforming lives with support from PEPFAR.

Tatu is also legally barred from coming to America. The administration must have found a way to get Msangi a special waiver from immigration authorities allowing her to enter the country. Another reason to support the Kerry-Smith proposal to end the still-valid Jesse Helms ban on all HIV-positive non-Americans visiting the U.S.

Rasmussen shows a sudden surge for McCain in Florida.

Novak unearths an important fact:

Another problem for pollsters is a California peculiarity. A registered independent who shows up at a polling place Feb. 5 and asks for a Republican ballot will be told, sorry, but the Republican primary is for registered Republicans only. But the voter then may take a ballot in the more permissive Democratic election. How many will do this and then vote for Obama? The polls cannot foretell that.

Mitt goes Cuban in Miami. Fashion-wise, that is.

Cartoonist Joep Bertrams:

She looks a bit like the Queen in this, no?

Reihan cheers himself up.

This gets good after about a minute:

Toni Morrison backs Obama:

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader?  Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed?  Someone with courage instead of mere ambition?  Someone who truly thinks of his country’s citizens as "we," not "they"?  Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Yes, she’s thinking beyond racial categories. He has that effect on people.

Ambers says that Ted is like Obama:

The New Kennedy is even more of an attractive figure, in some respects. He has never shirked the responsibility of Democrats to beat up Republicans, but throughout his career, he has demonstrated a long arm for compromise. Most recently, He worked with President Bush on No Child Left Behind and with Mitt Romney (whether Romney currently accepts it or not) on health care in Massachusetts.

In some ways, there may be no member of the Democratic pantheon who better reflects the consensus-based, transformative and activist-oriented politics that Obama embraces.

I can’t imagine it will buoy independents. But they’re not the ones Obama needs right now.