The candidates on Darfur

Today on Time.com's political diary The Page I read that U.S. senators Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton are all supporting the cause pushed by the Save Darfur charity (savedarfur.org). The Times also gives this press today. In a rare joint statement titled "We Stand United On Sudan" the three major White House hopefuls call the crisis in Darfur "genocide" and say "it would be a huge mistake for the Khartoum regime to think that it will benefit by running out the clock on the Bush Administration." Here is a big chunk of the letter:

We deplore all violence against the people of Darfur. There can be no doubt that the Sudanese government is chiefly responsible for the violence and is able to end it. We condemn the Sudanese government's consistent efforts to undermine peace and security, including its repeated attacks against its own people and the multiple barriers it has put up to the swift and effective deployment of the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force. We further condemn the Sudanese government's refusal to adhere to the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the conflict in southern Sudan.

Today, we wish to make clear to the Sudanese government that on this moral issue of tremendous importance, there is no divide between us. We stand united and demand that the genocide and violence in Darfur be brought to an end and that the CPA be fully implemented. Even as we campaign for the presidency, we will use our standing as Senators to press for the steps needed to ensure that the United States honors, in practice and in deed, its commitment to the cause of peace and protection of Darfur's innocent citizenry. We will continue to keep a close watch on events in Sudan and speak out for its marginalized peoples.

The charity also released a video featuring snippets they'd filmed of the candidates explaining their positions on the Sudan crisis:




These clips were taken from sit downs that the organization did with the candidates back in November 2007 so the extended samples include John Edwards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYWGLbgIy2s

McCain calls the Janjaweed militia the "Janjaweeds"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZcDOOnvUA8

Clinton opts to read a statement from a teleprompter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyEYtHIOGhI

Like Edwards, Obama speaks comfortably off the cuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEd583-fA8M

into the night

I said I wasn't going to watch tonight, but here I am, glued to the tube as usual and I'm already wrong about Vermont, thankfully. Earlier I worried that Clinton would win it but I'm glad I'm wrong once again. At the moment Obama has Vermont, so if Obama and Clinton split Texas and Ohio respectively, and early results indicate that they could, then Rhode Island might actually play a slightly more significant role, even if in a symbolic sense. If RI goes to Clinton then she'll spin it, spin it, spin it saying that she earned an even split on Super Tuesday 2 so we're back to things being equal. If Rhode Island goes to Obama then he'll come out of the night with 3 of 4 which should be considered huge, but of course spin and momentum are a mother. So I was wrong about Vermont but my nerves still aren't settled.

Medvedev... whatever

On Newsvine it looks like I got a little traction on an opinion bit that I whipped up Wednesday morning in response to Clinton's performance in Tuesday night's Ohio debate. I said "She prepared for the last debate by watching SNL, not learning how to pronounce the new Russian leader's name" and got 11 comments and 14 votes up. People began commenting right away and their activity went on till pretty late last night. Looks like most responses are in agreement with my point, which may or may not be a good thing. But then there was one outspoken dissenter in there (someone so supportive of Clinton's debate performance that they sounded as delusional as Saddam Hussein's old press spokesperson from early in the Iraq war... arrghh, what was that dude's name?!?), but the going majority pounced on that person. There's always a good time to be had in web forums, check out my Clinton Wasn't Ready piece and also check out the links I reference from Newsweek and TIME »»

UPDATE: His nickname was COMICAL ALI

Right Now: My story is prominent on Newsvine

I just published and it's Saturday evening so there's not a ton of activity on the site but I'm still going to bigup myself at the moment and take screenshots like a proud dad. Because I tagged my story with clinton and obama, the system is featuring them right up at the top of the sidebar. In the piece I raise the question: Could Hillary Clinton's campaign be starting to get donations from hardcore Republicans who actually need her to succeed?

I'm doing my best to not sound like a conspiracy theorist but it's a fair question when you read the whole piece. Rush Limbaugh is speaking about this subject and everything so check out the sceenshots below and my opinion piece on Newsvine: "Could The "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" Be Financing Hillary?"