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.

But let's suppose we ignore the fact that this only further entrenches our dependence on foreign oil, and examine the Department of Transportation estimate that repealing the gas tax, which funds federal highway upkeep projects, will result in a loss of 300,000 jobs this summer. That's fifteen times the number of jobs we lost in the entire month of April, and a complete hypocrisy from a candidate who is supposedly predicated on job creation.

A transfer of funds from a windfall profits tax might assuage this resulting catastrophe, but such a tax has never been coupled with a repeal of the gas tax in any of its iterations. I suggest that setting up the safety net prior to jumping off this cliff would be in order: actually instating the windfall tax before praying on its revenue to save the construction jobs and the asses of the politicians who are looking to put themselves on the line.

In what is still far from the worst-case scenario, an increase in gas prices following the removal of the tax would put eighteen additional cents per gallon, and possibly even more in the hands of the oil companies who continue to clean up a tidy sum at the expense of us at the gas pump, and indirectly, everything we purchase that at one point or another must be transported.

The question—the ridiculous ultimatum straight out of the George Bush lexicon—is in fact pointed the other direction. If one must be with consumers or the oil companies, those in favor of removing the gas tax have woefully found themselves on the unfortunate, albeit more wealthy side of the equation.

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 do, to an extent, understand the dynamic in which Senator Obama has been placed. I have plenty of close, personal friends who espouse outlandish ideas (you know who you are), be they theological, political, or otherwise. I still even turn to these individuals for insight or their thoughts on life situations, maybe not for use in my own political opinion, but in knowing that just because one part of their philosophy may be influenced by certain experiences, merit is not stripped from everything they have to say.

That being said, I have little tolerance for those who don't respect my ideas and opinions in return. Wright has dismissed how Obama has handled this situation, and by way of discounting the greatest statement on race of this generation, he may have singlehandedly set back the progress that this campaign has brought.

If any friend had written off my fair opposition to their thoughts as pandering or weakness, I would be upset. I would be publicly upset.

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.

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).

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).

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.

I tend to believe that the best bet would be an additional bidding partner—though it’s unlikely that any single group could match Microsoft or Google in a full-out auction. I worry that solidifying major portions of revenue from Internet’s lifeline—advertising—is potentially harmful because it sews up a lot of capital motivation that drives innovation online.

How? Well, a lot of sites (including this one), derive their income from advertising wholesalers, folks like Google, who essentially “lease” space on web pages to place advertising. Less competition in the market could affect how much people or companies pay Google to advertise or how much Google pays out to the sites on which the advertising is placed.

Now, a lot of development on the Internet is done by open-source people, hobbyists, college students, freelance writers—who are more than happy to produce without market-driven incentives. Writing a blog in your Firefox browser that runs on Ubuntu Linux would be a certain example of that. But large-scale fusions like the ones proposed for Yahoo are dangerous because they continue limited the room in which democratic, individually-created media and programming can thrive, or even support someone’s living.

And because all stories about Microsoft deserve a snappy, cliché sign-off: If the Nineties were a gold rush, this is Manifest Destiny, and I’m leery about how this West will be won.

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).

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.

I spoke recently with Dr. JoAnn Vorst, who is the head of the Lafayette (Indiana) Adult Resource Academy. As an adult education center that splits funding between federal and state sources, LARA is subject to No Child Left Behind. Already at a disadvantage because the majority of students are high school dropouts seeking GED training, Dr. Vorst must fight ridiculous NCLB standards to keep the center's funding. Test standards. Attendance standards. Standards that seem impossible for a school whose students are almost always low-income, possibly homeless, and who generally have to split their time between class and one or two jobs.

When we talk about economic downturn, Americans defaulting on mortgages, citizens unemployed, we must talk about these kind of people. We must address their educational concerns, and here's some cold legislation like NCLB that stands in the way of direct progress. NCLB is actually regressive—a virus that destroys employment training services like LARA. And that's not an isolated occurrence. This administration's education policy is destructive and sickening. Are there no educators in the Department of Education!?

Which is why I was upset to read Bush's economic initiatives. First page: “President Bush will call on Congress to pass bipartisan legislation reauthorizing and strengthening No Child Left Behind. He will also ask Congress to support a new $300 million “Pell Grants for Kids” program to help poor children in underperforming school afford the schools of their choice and announce a White House Summit on inner city children in faith-based and other non-public schools that will be held this spring.”

Not just a call for further cementing of NCLB, but also the number two enemy of public schooling: school vouchers. Vouchers steal money from public school systems much like NCLB does, but instead of transferring it to other public schools, it gives it to private/parochial schools outside of government oversight and outside the stipulation of the Establishment Clause.

But I worry that congressional Democrats and other opponents to these problematic programs are distracted. I worry that they'll see something like “Pell Grants for Kids” and not read “school choice” as a funding cut for underfunded schools. I worry further that as a nation we could rightly steer clear of the GOP candidates, only to get a Democratic candidate who not only voted for NCLB initially, but who supports its continuation in present form.

I hope the State of the Union speech reminded the American people to watch our president. He may only have a year left, but he's not a lame duck if no one's holding him accountable.

¹ - “Building A Better Future Through Trusting And Empowering The American People” - President Bush's agenda highlights for bringing about economic change in the United States during the remainder of his term in office. Available online in PDF format from BBC News at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_01_08_sotu_2008.pdf

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).