Obama Evening News & Roundup -- Rant alert!

Here are remarks that Barack Obama gave about the idealism of Bobby Kennedy in 2005:

Rather, the idealism of Robert Kennedy – the unfinished legacy that calls us still – is a fundamental belief in the continued perfection of American ideals.

It’s a belief that says if this nation was truly founded on the principles of freedom and equality, it could not sit idly by while millions were shackled because of the color of their skin. That if we are to shine as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world, we must be respected not just for the might of our military, but for the reach of our ideals. That if this is a land where destiny is not determined by birth or circumstance, we have a duty to ensure that the child of a millionaire and the child of a welfare mom have the same chance in life. That if out of many, we are truly one, then we must not limit ourselves to the pursuit of selfish gain, but that which will help all Americans rise together.

We have not always lived up to these ideals and we may fail again in the future, but this legacy calls on us to try. And the reason it does – the reason we still hear the echo of not only Bobby’s words, but John’s and King’s and Roosevelt’s and Lincoln’s before him – is because they stand in such stark contrast to the place in which we find ourselves today.

It’s the timidity of politics that’s holding us back right now – the politics of can’t-do and oh-well. An energy crisis that jeopardizes our security and our economy? No magic wand to fix it, we’re told. Thousands of jobs vanishing overseas? It’s actually healthier for the economy that way. Three days late to the worst natural disaster in American history? Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.

And of course, if nothing can be done to solve the problems we face, if we have no collective responsibility to look out for one another, then the next logical step is to give everyone one big refund on their government – divvy it up into individual tax breaks, hand ‘em out, and encourage everyone to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own schools, their own roads, their own levees...

There are also events being planned around the world for Darfur on April 13th.

CBS reports on Clinton's "heroic" trip to Bosnia.

The fact that Chelsea was on the trip suggests that Clinton knew that this would not be a dangerous trip. There have been a couple of plausible alternative explainations for Clinton's trip. The first is that she has an exaggerated sense of danger. The second is that she had false memories of the event.

But lying constitutes the act of either knowing or believing that what one is saying is not true. And no reasonable mother would want to put their daughter in the kind of danger that Clinton described in her tall tale about Bosnia. So, the fact that Hillary was willing to take her own daugher to Bosnia means that she did not think of the mission as dangerous at the time.

And in addressing the false memory scenario, the problem is that she is still committing the act of lying -- when a person lies about events like this, they tell themselves the lie over and over again until they believe that it is true. The paradox could be that she lied to herself about the trip so often that she genuinely believes it to be true.

And there is another observation to make -- if Hillary is really the experienced candidate that she says she is, then there is no need for her to make up these sorts of lies.

Democrats.com has organizing tools for those interested in organizing a town hall meeting for your local Congressman on Iraq.

100 Indian workers are saying that they were held against their will in Mississippi.

The global union movement is calling on the U.S. and Indian governments to take legal action against Signal International, a marine construction company, and two of its recruiters. Nearly 100 Indian workers say they were enticed to come to work at the company’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., where they say they were held in modern-day slavery.

On March 18, these workers embarked on a "satyagrahah," or truth action, in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, traveling from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to reveal the truth of the guest worker program–that the  program is being used to sanction forced labor by migrants and to further disenfranchise the most vulnerable American workers. As part of their journey, workers will also meet with allies from the African American and labor rights communities in key sites in the civil rights struggle, including Jackson, Miss.; Selma, Ala.; Atlanta; and Greensboro, N.C

Obama's position on guest workers:

But I fully appreciate that we cannot create a new guestworker program without making it as close to impossible as we can for illegal workers to find employment. We do not need new guestworkers plus future undocumented immigrants. We need guestworkers instead of undocumented immigrants.

Toward that end, American employers need to take responsibility. Too often illegal immigrants are lured here with a promise of a job, only to receive unconscionably low wages. In the interest of cheap labor, unscrupulous employers look the other way when employees provide fraudulent U.S. citizenship documents. Some actually call and place orders for undocumented workers because they don't want to pay minimum wages to American workers in surrounding communities. These acts hurt both American workers and immigrants whose sole aim is to work hard and get ahead. That is why we need a simple, foolproof, and mandatory mechanism for all employers to check the legal status of new hires. Such a mechanism is in the Judiciary Committee bill.

And before any guestworker is hired, the job must be made available to Americans at a decent wage with benefits. Employers then need to show that there are no Americans to take these jobs. I am not willing to take it on faith that there are jobs that Americans will not take. There has to be a showing. If this guestworker program is to succeed, it must be properly calibrated to make certain that these are jobs that cannot be filled by Americans, or that the guestworkers provide particular skills we can't find in this country.

I know that dealing with the undocumented population is difficult, for practical and political reasons. But we simply cannot claim to have dealt with the problems of illegal immigration if we ignore the illegal resident population or pretend they will leave voluntarily. Some of the proposed ideas in Congress provide a temporary legal status and call for deportation, but fail to answer how the government would deport 11 million people. I don't know how it would be done. I don't know how we would line up all the buses and trains and airplanes and send 11 million people back to their countries of origin. I don't know why it is that we expect they would voluntarily leave after having taken the risk of coming to this country without proper documentation.

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RANT ALERT -- The most important issue at stake:

The most important issue at stake here in this race is peoples' lives. We have a fundamental choice between the politics of the future and the same tired old politics of the past.

John McCain is one of the most dangerous politicians to come out of the Republican ranks because of his policies. He will continue the Bush policy of perpetual warfare, invade and attack Iran, abolish the minimum wage so that the only viable economic option for a lot of people is enlisting and fighting John McCain's wars of choice, and exploiting the plight of illegal immigrants through massively expanded "guest worker" programs that give them no political rights whatsoever, meaning that they can be paid next to nothing and sent back home if they try to form a union.

Yet, while the housing crisis continues to spiral out of control, sucking the life out of the economy, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have shown today that they care nothing about the worries and concerns of average people. All Hillary Clinton can do is wax hysterical about those Scary Brown People while playing mind games with millions of people who desperately want some kind of hero in the mold of King or the Kennedys or Al Gore. And John McCain is similar to Herbert Hoover in that he would refuse to do anything while gas prices spiral out of control while people lose their life savings to predatory loans. He doesn't even have a plan to address gas prices on his website.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made a consistent effort to relate to us and work to make our lives better. You name it, he has a plan for it. Let's just use energy as an example. I publish a newspaper; I did an article about the high gas prices and who would do what. Obama's energy plan took up over half a page, three times as much as Hillary's plan. Hillary's took a column or so, and had some good ideas. John McCain's had nothing.

I supported John Edwards for President because I thought, among other things, that he would bring a lot of new people into the process; especially rural Americans. But what Obama has managed to accomplish has blown that away; there are over 4 million people registered to vote in the PA elections. Over 2 million have contributed to his campaign, whom Barack can tap into if he needs more money. Obama's campaign is nothing less than a concerted effort to heal this country of its long-time racial wounds so that we can begin to understand each other and work together to solve our country's problems.

And I have one thing to say to those militant "supporters" of Hillary who come onto progressive boards and spew nothing but hate for Obama -- you are enabling John McCain to win and invade Iran. When you divide the party enough so that John McCain wins, and he invades Iran, the blood of millions of people will be on your hands. Millions of people will curse the name of Hillary Clinton and enablers like you for what you have done. Hillary Clinton has already asked to be our next President, and the American people have already spoken -- the answer is no. If you can't take no for an answer, then the problem is with you, and not with anything Obama ever did. This has its similarities with rapists who can't take no for an answer from a woman whom they are trying to bed.  

This is not directed at the 95% or so of Clinton supporters who would never do such a thing -- to them, I say that they ran a good campaign and fought hard for their candidate. This is directed at the fringe crew who would say anything to get Hillary elected and can't take no for an answer. You deserve all the donuts, scorn, pictures, and ridicule that you get.