Odds And Ends, Wednesday
Mitt's First 2012 Granite State Adventure
Mitt Romney heads to NH April 30 for The 2008 New Hampshire Primary Awards Dinner, hosted by the New Hampshire Political Library, reports NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli. Also attending: Bill Bradley, CNN's Candy Crowley and fmr Gov. Walter Peterson.
Super D Watch
WY Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Super D, endorsed Barack Obama today. “The negativity, partisanship and lack of purpose that characterize our national debate and government are crippling this country,” Freudenthal said in a statement released by Obama's campaign. “While no one individual can effect this change alone, the change must begin with someone. Senator Obama is the Democratic candidate with the openness, honesty and skill to end this vicious cycle of business as usual.”
Tribute
Hillary Clinton released a video tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Surrogate's Promise
Sen. Lindsey Graham told Atlantic Media's Ron Brownstein today during a morning panel conversation in Washington that John McCain would maintain current troop levels in Iraq if necessary. The exchange, and a snippet:
Brownstein: If commanders recommend maintaining roughly the current American troop levels for an entire presidential term, John McCain would be willing to do that?
Graham: Well, if John thought the commanders were right, yes, because he would do what he thought was best for the national security. If John had to pick between popularity and national security, he’s going to pick national security.
Two questions for Obama
1) Your father was from Kenya, but the only father figure in your life until your teenage years was your stepfather, who was your stepfather?
2) You have stated that Pastor Wright converted you to christianity some twenty years ago, what was your religion if any prior to being converted?
Wikipedia could have answered these for you, or even his first book, Dreams of my Father. But I understand you have a partisan hackery agenda, and little time for facts.
Quoth the wiki:
In Chapter 6 of the book, titled "Faith," Obama writes that he "was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." The chapter details how Obama, in his twenties, while working with black churches as a community organizer, came to understand "the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change":
It was because of these newfound understandings—that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved—that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.[153]