cross posted on daily kos
This is the second part of my multi-part series where I review Hillary Clinton's performance at the October 18th Kaiser Health Care forum.  In the first part of this series, I talked about Clinton's committment to a public option.  In this section, I will talk about Clinton's political seasoning as it relates to her health plan, and why I think this makes her uniquely prepared to pass Universal Health Coverage as our next President.

Cross Posted on Daily Kos
There has been much debate on the blogs as to Hillary Clinton and her true intentions on health care.  I think Hillary Clinton has been perfectly straight forward about her intentions to extend affordable, quality health coverage to all Americans.  On October 18th, Hillary Clinton participated in a presidential forum at Kaiser.  I recommend everyone who regards health care as an important issue in the next election, watch this forum.  Kaiser has already hosted a similar forum with John Edwards, and will produce a number of other forums with most of the other presidential candidates.  I found Hillary's performance at the forum extremely compelling.  I will talk in future posts about a number of issues Hillary Clinton articulates at the forum, as well as some traits she displays, which I believe demonstrate her unique preparedness to pass Universal Health Coverage as our next President.  Today I will discuss one component of her plan, the public option portion, which I have discussed before.

cross posted on Hillary's Bloggers and Daily Kos

In this posting, I will offer a quick overview of Hillary's Work-Family Agenda.  I will then look at some of Hillary's other proposals and suggest how these plans, taken together, offer a much needed update to how we approach work, family and health in this country.

Since no one here is reporting this(guess everyone is sleeping) Gore's out, though ofcourse he was never really in.  Reuters is reporting Gore has no plans to run, which he's basically been saying all year.  According to Reuters:

He told Norway's NRK television that it was a "great honor" to share the prestigious prize, announced in Oslo on Friday, with the U.N. climate panel.

Asked how the prize would affect his political future, he said: "I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all." NRK said that it was his first interview since the award.

Here's a link to the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news -campaign-gore.html

Cross posted on dailykos...

Today we've been treated to two diaries calling into question how Hillary's gender is effecting the race.  One ponders if Hillary's success thus far is due to her "NOT acting like a woman" the other suggests Hillary may alienate women by too blatant an appeal.  I think Hillary's gender is somewhat a double edged sword in this campaign, helping her with women, hurting her with men.  It seems to me she has recieved so much support from women that she has decided not to down play the historic significance of her potential presidency despite some backlash from male voters.  For me, personally, Hillary's gender is a factor.  More below the fold...

I'll admit, I was spooked by the passage of Kyl-Lieberman amendment, mostly because I don't trust Lieberman.  But, at this point, I don't see passage of this amendment as in an open invitation by Congress for Bush to wage war on Iran no matter how much Lieberman wishes it were so.  And, I'd just like to know, can anyone tell me why, if this is a move toward war with Iran, did Dick Durbin vote for it?

I am getting sick and tired of the trolls, the sockpuppets, and the down right nasty personal attackers.  I'm not sure why the administors of this site are MIA, but isn't there anything we, the community, can do about these often bad actor?  I'm all for free speech.  It's a major reason I hardly every troll rate anyone.  But I can't stand this bs.  Let's set some simple rules:

1)Stop the trolling.  Referring to Elizabeth Edwards as John Edwards "sick wife" is not acceptable.  It's trollish to disparage someone because they have cancer, and it's an example of the sort of trollish behavior that has become commonplace around here.  

2)Kill the puppets.  Atleast one regular contributer posts under about 6 different persona's here.  It's dishonest, and even if a particular poster supports your given candidates, let's stop rewarding that behavior.

3)No personal attacks.  Attack the position if you want, even offer criticism of the poster if it is appropriate, but smearing another poster is not fair game.

Look, a number of the people who participate in this most unhelpful conduct, also provide substantial diaries, much more worthy of their, and our, time.  But if they cannot adhere to simple decency, I say it's time for them to go.  We should have zero tolerance for this sort of behavior.  That doesn't mean we have to be 100% nice to eachother all the time, but we all know when we see this sort of ugliness, and if the administrators of this site won't fo anything about it, I hope we will.

Cross-Posted on hillarysbloggers and dailykos

In a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Democrats associated Hillary with the words "tough" and "smart" over all of her Democratic primary counterparts. Indeed, a full 53% of Democrats associated "smart" with Hillary, Obama was the second most associated with "smart" at 23%. By association with "tough", Hillary was chosen by a whopping 67% of Democratic voters, Obama was the second most associated with "tough" by a paltry 14%.

As Hillary increasingly becomes the Party standard bearer this association is significant. In 2006, under the direction of Howard Dean, the Democratic National Party(DNC) began rolling out a new branding for the Democrats that emphasized smarts and toughness. At a April 2006 breakfast with the Christian Monitor, Dean had this to say about the election of 2008:
"One of our slogans is probably going to end up being 'tough and smart.' Because what the Republicans have done is tough and not very smart." Now say what you will about Howard Dean (personally, I'm a fan), I think he's been quite right about issues of branding and expanding the political market for the Party. I also think that he alone probably didn't develop the "tough and smart" theme. More likely it's the result of extensive research and plain old commonsense. Indeed, several Democrats in recent months has repeated this mantra. I think it bodes well for Hillary and, should she win the nomination, the Party(given Dean's prediction), that Hillary has already developed a strong perception among Democratic voters as being both tough and smart.

For the Pew Poll:
http://people-press.org/reports/display. php3?ReportID=356

For the Christian Science Monitor Breakfast:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0420/p03s0 3-usmb.html