Afternoon Roundup - Snippets from Around the Web

by: campskunk

Sat Jul 12, 2008 at 20:18:25 PM EDT

"The Obama campaign will not be sponsoring a car in the Sprint Cup series, though we will continue to look for ways to reach out to voters and convey Senator Obama's message of change." said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Here's the story. There were a few problems...

1) ...the car proposed for sponsorship was a Toyota. Oops. Say goodbye to a few hundred thousand UAW votes, Democrats.

2) ...the driver, Ken Schrader... well, let's say his previous political inclinations were a bit inconvenient.

Ken Schrader gave $1,000 to the campaign of North Carolina Republican congressman Robin Hayes in June 2004, and a total of $2,500 in 2003 and 2004 to the failed Virginia congressional campaign of Republican Kevin Triplett, a former NASCAR official.

Also according to the FEC, Mrs. Ann Schrader of Concord, N.C. and Ken Schrader Racing donated a total of $2,000 to President Bush's campaign in May 2004 and $900 to the North Carolina Republican Executive Committee in August 2004.

Two more items below the fold...

I see no transformational quality to either Obama or his candidacy. Obama said he was a new kind of politician. He sold an entire younger generation on the theory of change, a new kind of politics in Washington and he's delivered the status quo. He's shown us that on FISA, the death penalty, guns, religion, Iraq, Afghanistan and trade policy (so far) he's all about preserving the status quo and not rocking the boat in his quest for votes. How much more "politics as usual" can you get?

Jeralyn was reacting to this NYT article about the dawning awareness of progressives that Obama might not actually walk on water.

Finally, there's this WSJ article about "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops", with some interesting tidbits...

1) George Soros and  a group of 70 super-rich liberal donors have contributed $100 million to fund grants in four areas: media, ideas, leadership and civic engagement.

2) One of the recipients was Colorado Confidential, a project of The Center for Independent Media, which subsidized liberal bloggers. I think we know some of those people - not that they're identifying the fact that they're subsidized.

3) Mr. Obama has extensive connections with the granddaddy of activist groups, Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which has gotten millions in government grants for its low-income housing programs. In 1992, Acorn hired Mr. Obama to run a voter registration effort. He later became a trainer for the group, as well as its lawyer in election law cases. Acorn's political arm has endorsed Mr. Obama while its "voter education" arm has pledged to spend $35 million to register people this fall -- despite a history of vote fraud scandals that have led to guilty pleas by many Acorn employees.

Oh well. Chicago politics as usual.