From the Colbert Report: Democralypse Now - Florida and Michigan

Steve Colbert does it again. Enjoy!

U.S. Cuba Policy: A H.C. Anderson Moment In Miami

Barack Obama went to Miami to talk to the exile-Cuban lobby group, and in one swoop he swept aside half a century of failed U.S. policies towards Cuba.

The Emperor is naked. Nobody has had the guts to say it. Not the "Straight Talking Express" John McCain, who just four days before told the Cuban Americans what he thought they wanted to hear, and not the "fighter" Hillary Clinton who would not dear to challenge her presumed Florida voters. But Obama did. He went right to the core, and laid out a radically different policy against Cuba and Latin America. 

America is ready for change, and so is Miami and Florida.

''I believe he is the only candidate who has spoken sincerely about the intentions that he has toward Cuba,'' said Alina Fernandez, Fidel Castro's daughter living in exile.

Hans Sandberg

Watch his speech:

This Just In From Norway: Let the Government Feed the Bloggers

Two apparently desperate Norwegian bloggers have applied to the Norwegian Government for a salary similar to the one artists can obtain. All according to a report from the Swedish news agency TT published in Realtid.se.

The two Norwegian bloggers claim that they are no less needed by society than other artists, such as painters and composers, but the Department of Culture said no. One of the bloggers wrote in her application that her blog has 150 unique visitors every week, and more are coming. Hence, she needs money to continue her heavy lifting in cyberspace. To which the Department replied that the salaries to artists only goes to artists that "have shown over a long time that they are providing a useful social value of high quality."

I certainly feel her pain.

Making money from blogging is tough. I have passed 12,000 page views, and that has earned me less than 62 dollars in five months. But if not even this stinking rich Northern OPEC member can spare a dime for the starving artist, I will probably have to stick to my day job for now.

It's not fair, but one day we will have had enough!

We will withdraw our digits from our keyboards, massage our tired temples, ditch our iced lattes, and emerge from Starbucks to face the real world. No more words will flow onto the screens for others to exploit without attribution, and all you free riding readers will regret that you didn't even have the courtesy to click on those little ads that make billions for Google and pennies for us.... The day will come when we will direct our digital toil against our oppressors as they once turned on their analog predecessors.

Let the ruling media tycoons tremble at a web 2.0 revolution. The bloggers have nothing to lose but their carpal tunnel pain. They have a web to win.

Bloggers of all domains, unite!

Hans Sandberg 

Is There A Sexist Bias Against Hillary?

It has been suggested that there is sexism behind the democratic voters preference for Barack Obama, rather than Hillary Clinton, but that is just another myth from the Hillary spin machine.

Sexism would probably have been the case if Hillary had become the democratic nominee, as older white republicans might have hesitated to vote for a woman the same way some older white democrats hesistate to vote for a black man. But we haven't seen any sexism in the democratic primary. To the contrary, sex has helped rather than hurt Hillary in this campaign.

I never had any problem with Hillary as a woman, and I might have voted for her, despite the fact that I find her too much like on of the boys in the traditional political game. What is so fresh about Obama is that he dares to be himself as a politician, but who knows who's behind that mask Hillary always wears? I don't know her, and the harder she fights to look like a fighter, the less I like her. In a way I feel bad for her, like I felt for Al Gore Jr., before he broke out of his shell and became a global hero. What she needs is not the White House, but a vacation as Larry David pointed out when he switched from Hillary to Obama. And while sipping a diet coke by the pool somewhere, she would do well reading Eckhart Tolle, the German zen master.

Hans Sandberg

For another take on the sexist issue, read Nathanial Bach's post Obama's Sexist Victory in Oregon on the Huffington Post.

Obama Shines As Orator After Oregon Victory

Barack Obama returned to Iowa after his strong victory in the overwhelmingly white state of Oregon. Even though Hillary won convincingly in Kentucky, her victory will not change the fundamentals in this campaign.

On Tuesday night, Obama announced in Des Moines, Iowa, that he now has the majority of the pledged delegats, and laid out his program in a powerful and passionate speech that left no uncertainty about who is the democratic leader in  this race. It was short, sharp and sassy.

There is now no way for Hillary to win the nomination unless she stages a coup that could split the Democratic party. Obama must be furious about her tactics and egotism, which has hurt the overall democratic campaign and aided John McCain's chances, but he gentlemanly waits for her to do what she needs to do - to muster as much strength as she can, maybe hoping to force her way into the VP-slot, before she bows out of the primary campaign.

Hans Sandberg

Watch the speech!

So, Who Would You Hire? Clinton Or Obama?

In Kentucky, Hillary Clinton once again framed the primary election as a hiring decision. Well, let's think about it as a hiring decision.

Who would you hire?

Candidate A is a wealthy Washington insider who fudges her math (the popular vote is with me....), embellishes on her already inflated resumé (bringing peace to Northern Ireland), lies (ducking sniper fire in Bosnia), panders (no gazoline tax this Summer!), refuses to acknowledge a major mistake (voted to authorize Bush war in Iraq), and doesn't stop at playing the race card (Obama can't win the white working class!)

Candidate B, the son of a struggling single mother, is a brilliant young Senator who gave up a lucrative career as high paid Harvard educated lawyer to become a community organizer in Chicago, a man who has made it a matter of principle to run an honest campaign, refusing the sirens of the lobbyists, and instead leads one of the most innovative, well organized and successful election campaigns in U.S. history, a Senator who had the guts and good judgement to not vote to authorize the war.  

Well, I guess it's a hiring decision after all.

Hans Sandberg

Bush Whacks Obama Who Smacks Him Right Back

After having being pounded by leading democrats and smacked by Barack Obama, George W. Bush changed his tune on Friday, saying that "I wasn't talking about Obama". Yeah, sure...



It wasn't just his usual blend of dimwittedness and slyness he displayed in Knesset, but his total disregard for the dignity that is supposed to go with the Presidency. It's plainly bad style to use a foreign arena when picking a partisan fight.

The whole thing backfired. It gave Obama a chance to fight back; to contrast Bush's imperial bluster with an intelligent approach to foreign policy. 



And poor John McCain who yesterday picked up where Bush left off failed to achieve anything else than to strengthen people's impression that he is running to become Bush III. And if that wasn't bad enough, news broke yesterday that McCain was for talking to Hamas before he was against it, causing his foreign policy attacks against Obama land in his own lap. 

Hans Sandberg 

Hillary After W. Virginia Victory: "I Deeply Admire Senator Obama"

Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary as expected, and of course she promised to stay in the fight, but more interesting was the soft tone she choose when mentioning Barack Obama. "I deeply admire Senator Obama," she said in Charleston, West Virginia.

And that may be more important than the rest of the sentence where she said what she had to say at this moment of her campaign, i.e. that "I believe our case, a case West Virginia has helped to make, our case is stronger." Yes, it made her case a little stronger, from 1.2 to 1.4 on a scale from 1 to 10.

And the Winner Is....(Says Time Magazine)*

Veteran political reporter Joe Klein has a very interesting essay about the primary campaign in the new issue of Time magazine, which features Barack Obama on the cover.

"In the end, Obama's challenge to the media is as significant as his challenge to McCain. All the evidence — and especially the selection of these two apparent nominees — suggests the public not only is taking this election very seriously but is also extremely concerned about the state of the nation and tired of politics as usual. I suspect the public is also tired of media as usual, tired of journalists who put showmanship over substance ... as I found myself doing in the days before the May 6 primaries. Obama was talking about the Republicans, but he could easily have been talking about the press when he said, 'The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. You see, I didn't get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.'"
(Joe Klein, Time magazine)