Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards appeared on a Scarborough-free edition of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program on Friday morning, stating that the candidate he voted for on Tuesday is "highly likely" to be the one that he will endorse following the finish of the Democratic Party primary process. He utilized the same language when describing Senator Barack Obama's nomination as "highly likely". 

Exchanges in the interview also gave the sense that the senator and former vice-presidential nominee voted for a different candidate than did his wife, outspoken health care advocate Elizabeth Edwards. Both husband and wife made it clear as late as Monday that they would not make an endorsement, at least not before the final Democratic contest in early June. 

Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke earlier today at a rally in Southern Indiana:

“I believe it would be important to get every member of Congress on record: Do they stand with the hard-pressed Americans who are trying to pay their gas bills at the gas station or do they stand once again with the oil companies? I want to know where people stand, and I want them to tell us: Are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?”

The senator alludes in this false choice idiocy, to the gas tax plan she supports—a course so dislodged from sound fiscal policy that it merits endorsement by Senator McCain. Which is no exaggeration, because the senior senator from Arizona is perpetuating the same economic bastardization.

A repeal of the tax, which places eighteen cents on top of every gallon of gasoline, is, well, here's American Public Media's “Marketplace” contributor Robert Reich:

“Talk about a dumb idea. It will only encourage Americans to drive more, thereby increasing demand and causing gas prices to rise even higher. Driving more will also put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which fuels global warming. And this will cost taxpayers some $10 billion. It's a cheap political gimmick that does nothing to stem the rising price of oil.”

Climate change aside, this type of result should be expected anytime demand is stimulated in a market that has a supply ceiling, and an uncomfortably low one at that. An argument could probably even be made for raising said tax, to encourage lower demands and the conservation that comes with that, but this is of course is an election year, and not one friendly to people who think that far in advance.

When Reverend Wright's comments first surfaced in March, I was watching Joe Scarborough's program on MSNBC, and didn't think it was much more than a two-day story that would have any real impact aside from maybe dispelling some of the lingering notions that the senator was a follower of Islam. Yes, the nature of the clips they played seemed a little outlandish, but I was willing to suspect that they were probably out of context, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn't totally in disagreement with the concept that the terrorist attacks of 11-September-2001 were in response to abrasive American foreign policy. It wasn't the entire motivator, sure, and they were by no means justified, but our actions in Africa and in the Middle East were a contributing factor in antagonizing al-Qaeda. Our presence there irritates them still. I don't think that's a secret.

Would I have used the words of Reverend Wright? Probably not. They seem sensationalist, and they too easily lose the meaning of the idea that he was trying to convey. But again, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the comments were birthed out of an atmosphere of an oppressed people that I, as a European-American, will never understand.

But a month and a half later, after Bittergate and Pennsylvania, and on the doorstep of the Indiana primary, the reverend has surfaced again and presented what is, in my opinion, the greatest obstacle to Obama's candidacy that he will face. Perhaps what is most frustrating, is that it's not as if this was drug back out into the daylight by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh (ever eager as they may seem)–but that this becoming a news story again is the sole responsibility of Reverend Wright.

Furthering the damage, Wright has compounded the problem by blowing the roof off the justifications that people like me had made. Statements that accuse the American government of implementing HIV/AIDS and suggesting that somehow we're involved in some fascist/racist conspiracy are done in such a fashion that I can no longer give him that benefit of the doubt. I can't try to find the root of reason in his comments, because they're no longer leveled on some sort of coherent sociological plane, but instead have sunk to the level of 9/11 conspiracies and maniacal ravings.

When Reverend Wright mocks President Kennedy in order to make a statement on linguistic racism, he leaves the realm of the wise-but-misunderstood and enters the realm of the idiotic and ignorant. Regardless of whether or not there is a true or honorable point buried deep within his words, his profound inability to communicate makes any semblance of truth irrelevant. You don't include–you don't repair relations–by driving people apart. He's spoken on a semi-public level before. He should just know better.

“I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.”

That's Senator Hillary Clinton (in a Philadelphia Daily News interview) trying to re-couch an earlier account of a 1996 trip to Bosnia. Whereas earlier campaign speeches had described the trip as an intense foreign policy mission amidst the dangers of war, accounts from the commander on the ground and comedian Sinbad have uncovered the truth as something much more tame. Oh, and Sheryl Crow was there. And there was singing. And poetry from an 8-year-old girl on the tarmac that was supposedly in the cross-hairs of the enemy.

People forget that she was supposed to be nominated months ago. This type of nonsense is the very reason her campaign now fights an uphill battle toward 2,025 instead of working to garner base support in a race against John McCain.

If she ran as herself, or as what colleagues-turned-supporters constantly describe as “herself”, I don't think she'd be so mired in issues like this. She is an eight-year senator. Exaggerations aside, she was the first lady for the greater part of the 1990s. I don't support her, but I'll accept that she has reasonable qualifications. But this—this is what eats away at that.

Because this is no John McCain sunni/shitte gaffe. I think you can chalk that one up to travel fatigue, or if nothing else, genuine incompetency on the issue. As evidenced by this backpedaling display over the past few days, this is either a serious failure of her recollection on multiple occasions, or she was legitimately being deceptive. If it's the former, she really has some convincing to do.

How will people, and the media they imbibe react when they discover that Puerto Rico has more Democratic Party pledged delegates (55) than formidable American states like Iowa (45) or Oregon (54). Furthermore, will they remember that Puerto Rico is a US territory? My theory is they've been given a generous amount of delegates to make up for the fact that this man is their unelected head of state.

Ron Paul now has 21 delegates. I believe the officials in his campaign are now allowed to drink.

In the news:

Charmayne Brown was reporting on an arrest for WSPA-TV in South Carolina, and was attacked by the subject's redneck relatives. Brown, and her cameraman who tried to intervene, luckily only suffered minor injuries.

Also, 26% of teenage girls have at least one STD. Wow.

Edward VanBogaert studies Government and Economics Economics education at Purdue University, and is the host of WCCR-Purdue's "A Metric Hour", Sunday Nights at 10pm (ishgnurecords.com/ametrichour).

It looked for a brief moment as if Representative Ron Paul would lose Texas’23rd to challenger Chris Peden, who had a vocal opposition in a district upset with Paul’s neglect of the district during his long-shot run for the Republican presidential nomination

That, and many Republicans had begun to become informed about what the congressman actually believed. Throughout the campaign, Paul’s fanatical supporters have played up the more popular libertarian elements of his issue positions: disengagement from Iraq, decriminalization of marijuana, and destruction of the Internal Revenue Service. Those tactics that work very well amongst previously-apathetic, laissez-faire twentysomethings, but aren’t in line with mainstream Texas conservatism. When campaigning in the Lone Star State, Paul fires up his alter ego—the one that’s a religious zealot against any corporate regulation and who brings home the pork despite espousing otherwise.

And the resistance turned out to be overblown. Like a number of expectations in Texas last night, it was not to be. Representative Paul defeated the self-financed businessman by more than a 2 to 1 margin, and will be unopposed in November.

Edward VanBogaert studies Government and Economics Economics education at Purdue University, and is the host of WCCR-Purdue's "A Metric Hour", Sunday Nights at 10pm (ishgnurecords.com/ametrichour).

The Microsoft Corporation announced a $44.6 billion dollar bid for long-time Internet search and advertising firm Yahoo Inc., once again testing the waters of antitrust regulation and perhaps trying to find surer footing in a market that in recent years has been increasingly dominated by ad front runner Google Inc.

However, not to be outdone, Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt contacted the powers-that-be at Yahoo to negotiate a business alliance that would block the Microsoft offer. The Wall Street Journal went on to report that while a Microsoft bail-out would look promising to many shareholders of Yahoo, who have witness a sharp decline since the rise of Google, company executives believe the Microsoft bid (that evens out at roughly $31 dollars per share) is undervalued.

Either deal, the Microsoft buyout or the Google alliance, are expected to be scrutinized heavily by antitrust regulators in the United States and the European Union, where the vast majority of the companies’ assets reside. Most analysts expect the EU to be more stringent in their evaluation of the proposal, while the present American administration has been somewhat lax in the enforcement of antitrust law.

Google continues to attempt to paint Microsoft as the enemy of "the openness of the Internet", and to an extent they are, but it's premature to overlook the type of consequences birthed by a strong Google/Yahoo alliance.

While the 22nd Amendment and bitter policy mistakes ensure that our sitting leader cannot run for a third presidential term, Bush seems to be running damage control. They may distance themselves from him, but few Republican candidates, if any, are immune to the economic failures of this administration. The ability of the Republican Party to get its footing in this volatile time will depend on how Bush 43 handles this downturn, and whether he does so with their core elements of conservatism.

So you can bet that Bush and congressional Republicans will fight like hell. And Democrats need to be cautious, because a number of his ideas, laid out in Monday's State of the Union, and in a preceding agenda¹ are troublesome, dangerous initiatives.

As a liberal and someone involved in the field of education, I've always been bothered by the No Child Left Behind Act. Fundamentally, it targets underperforming schools and “solves” the problem by taking away the one resource that's key to any sort of turnaround: funding.

But it goes further. The standards of underperformance that the program spells out seem to be ignorant of the education industry, and don't address the real issues that public education struggles with, namely resources and recruitment.