opensecrets.org
then go to ‘Presidential’ tab at the top.
Look at Donor Demographics,
look at % of contribuors $2300
top donors & what companies contributors are from
look at the companies that seem to be on EVERY candidate list

Adertising is the ‘gun’ of campaigns. The profile of contributors is the fingerprint on the gun. Money is sincere. You will learn a whole LOT about the race in 30 minutes of browsing. Educate yourself. The observations you make would be worth a blog of comments itself. (Hint, Barbara)

The fact that Obama suddenly appears as a viable alternative goes a long way towards explaining the surge. It feels like there’s a huge sigh of relief that maybe it won’t be Hillary after all. It’s this much more than any real preference for Obama’s message over Hillary’s

I don’t know what it will take to dethrone Brooks, Kristol, and Jonah Goldberg from their high thrones of punditry. This country will have to learn, probably the hard way, and probably too late, that there is a price for living in unreality as these over-ripe, highly paid vegetables do. The problem is that this price will largely be borne not by the pay masters of Brooks et al, but by those too unwilling or uneducated to see through them, and this is by design.

The right has done all it could to plunder the commons of this country during its rule, and this includes the common reality and even the very language and the meaning of words, crippling us from coming together, let alone moving forward. They’re all about divide and conquer, and then pillage. Tools like Brooks, installed in one of the country’s top newspapers are one of their main instruments in this warfare, in the deliberate contamination and destruction of information and discourse.

If I remember correctly, the gang of 14 involved when the Repugs were threatening the nuclear option for filibusters. Now, that they are the filibustering group, why don’t the Dems threaten the nuclear option?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5080836

I was right; Brooks’s point doesn’t make sense. Jeez, look who the Gang’s seven Democrats are (in fact, two of them– Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson– are Republicans in all but name). Senator Obama would have no reason on earth to join with them– and he should be proud he didn’t, as the compromise helped put that crooked skeeze Alito on the Court. Senator Clinton “didn’t join the Gang of 14″ either, so why did Brooks even bring it up?

Oh, right… vegetable.

I’ve said for years that choosing a presidential candidate solely on his policy proposals is dumb. Because, if you are paying attention, very little of what candidates promise are actually things that presidents alone deliver. They are things that Congress delivers.

And if you live long enough, you notice that very little of what candidates promise work out the way they promise it. I voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 in part because he promised to do something about the growing health care mess. He was elected And what happened? Nothing got done, because people weren’t behind it yet.

Even though it broke my heart when Al Gore was defeated in 2000, I think if Gore had been elected he’d have spent all his energies fighting off the wingnuts, and little of what he might have wanted to do would have happened.

I’m saying that at this point in history it’s more important to get progressives fired up and empowered and unified than it is to elect someone who has a briefcase full of bulleted lists.