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Can Barack Obama become the Jackie Robinson of the American Presidency?

Sixty-one years ago, a truly great athlete broke the color line in America’s "National Pastime," which still resides near the core of our culture.

Now the question of whether Barack Obama can do the same for the American presidency has moved to center stage.

Simply put, Jackie Robinson was one of history's most gifted all-around athletes. He mastered five major sports---football, baseball, basketball, tennis and track. As a complete performer, he may have been surpassed in the Twentieth Century only by the great Jim Thorpe.

It's hard to overstate the importance of Robinson’s 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In his first game, he went hitless in three at-bats. But he went on that season to become baseball’s first Rookie of the Year. In a big league career that lasted through the 1956 season, he was voted into six All-Star games, played in six World Series, and was once chosen the league’s Most Valuable Player.

Edwards just put Obama over the top

John Edwards just endorsed Barack Obama. If Edwards' 19 delegates take his advice and vote for Obama, then Obama now has 1,620 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,441. There are 189 delegates left to be pledged in remaining states. Clinton needs to win 184 of them (or 97 percent) in order to win, whereas Obama only needs 6 more delegates to put him over the top. To be clear, these are the numbers for pledged delegates, not including super delegates. Obama leads in that category as well, but I don't think anyone will or should stand for super delegates deciding an election.

There are, of course, states that have not yet voted. I'd love it if they could have a say in this thing. If it were up to me I would put every primary on one day in late October. It's not my fault that this particular race is over. It's not over in the way races are for candidates whom the corporate media hounds out of the race following one or two states. This one really is over.

Florida and Michigan are not included. The candidates did not compete in those states, and allowing them to do so now would involve a change in the rules mid-election, which seems highly unlikely.

Anne Feeney's "Dump the Bosses" -- a labor of love for the love of labor!

I’m not sure I can remember exactly where I first met Ann Feeney. Suffix it to be that Annie is the epitome of Preacher Casey in Steinbach’s great novel, “Salt of the Earth.” I know I saw her at Ravenswood, at Camp Solidarity in western Virginia, at the big steelworker rally at the WCI strike in Youngstown and at the Newport News strike. I could go on and on, but it really is true; wherever worker’s struggle for justice, it’s there you’ll find Ann Feeney!

As much as Ann’s singing for justice for working folks is a labor of love, she recently pointed out that it’s also a family tradition. At a recent show in Cleveland, Annie stated that she’d gotten a grant from the Pennsylvania Labor History Society to study, collect information on her grandfather, a hellraising Irish immigrant union leader and an associate of the great William Z. Foster. As she pointed out, what could be better than fighting for justice, singing along and getting paid to study your granddaddy?

A fire-breather in Congress

Rep. Robert Wexler (Dem., Florida) has written a book, soon to be released, that is as different from most congress members' books as Wexler is from most congress members. He's titled it "Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress." Wexler is depicted on the cover with the Capitol in the background and his fists in the air.

Wexler is a fighter and a liberal, and - yes - one CAN be both. But Wexler, I think, is more of a fighter than a liberal. He's unusually willing to speak up and fight for controversial positions. He does so loudly and articulately, and he goes for the jugular. But I don't find in his book any passionate or deep liberal world view. In fact, at times, Wexler expresses viewpoints that I find disturbingly illiberal.

Long night sitting-in

It was a 17 and 1/2 hour office occupation that began just after the lunch hour yesterday in Portland, Maine. We gathered outside the office of our Rep. Tom Allen's office at around 11am and began handing out leaflets and holding signs calling for an end to funding of the Iraq occupation. Just as we were ready to enter Allen's office to sit-in we learned that he had decided to vote against any more funding for the occupation unless there was a "withdrawal goal timeline" in the bill. Even though this was not exactly what we wanted, these timelines are non-binding, it was still progress and we decided to move on to the next target. The vote was supposed to happen yesterday but has been delayed because the Democrats' coalition is dissolving.

Conyers tells Bush Iran attack = Impeachment

Please call your Congress Member and ask them to co-sign a letter to President Bush from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers threatening impeachment if Bush attacks Iran. Below is a note from Conyers asking his colleagues to co-sign. Below that is the letter to Bush.

May 8, 2008

Join Me in Calling on President Bush to Respect Congress’ Exclusive Power to Declare War

Dear Democratic Colleague:

As we mark five years of war in Iraq, I have become increasingly concerned that the President may possibly take unilateral, preemptive military action against Iran. During the last seven years, the Bush Administration has exercised unprecedented assertions of Executive Branch power and shown an unparalleled aversion to the checks and balances put in place by the Constitution’s framers. The letter that follows asks President Bush to seek congressional authorization before launching any possible military strike against Iran and affirms Senator Biden’s statement last year that impeachment proceedings should be considered if the President fails to do so.

Enemies Burma & America meet over cyclone aid

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. military commander of the Pacific, Adm. Timothy J. Keating, met Burmese military officers in Burma on Monday for the first time, to jointly examine maps of the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy delta, during a successful delivery of the first American airlift of emergency aid.

"They met some Burmese officials at the airport, including the deputy foreign minister, and they gathered together and looked at maps," a U.S. official said in an interview, asking to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak for attribution.

Adm. Keating and other U.S. military personnel huddled with Burmese military and government officials at Rangoon's international airport in sweltering, mid-day heat.

They discussed geographical features, logistics, and the suffering of survivors on the stricken Irrawaddy River delta, where officially 28,458 people perished, and 33,416 disappeared in Cyclone Nargis.

The cyclone brought murderous rain, wind and tidal swells ashore from the Bay of Bengal, onto the densely packed delta southwest of Rangoon on May 3.

Did the Limbaugh effect also flip Michigan?

With Hillary Clinton rejecting the compromise that Michigan Democratic leaders just crafted, the Democratic Rules Committee has a dilemma. Clinton keeps demanding that Michigan's delegates be apportioned according to the January 15 vote, where she was the sole major candidate on the Democratic ballot. But there's another twist that no one has raised—the impact of a Rush Limbaugh-style crossover on the Michigan vote. Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" quite likely gave Clinton Indiana, provided much of her 4-point Texas margin, buttressed her Ohio win, and decreased Obama's margin in Mississippi. But no one talks about the impact of crossovers on Clinton's self-proclaimed Michigan victory, without which her unopposed candidacy would still have gotten less than 50 percent.

Salvadoran Youth from Suchitoto 13 Murdered; Tell Congress No Funding to Plan Mexico or the ILEA!

On May 3, Hector Antonio Ventura, one of the 14 people originally captured during an anti-water privatization protest in the town of Suchitoto last year, was stabbed to death in his home. Given his role as one of the accused in the high profile anti-terrorism case, Ventura’s death could likely be politically motivated, and therefore Salvadoran social movement organizations have called for a full investigation into his death.

Ventura was among 13 people charged last year under the controversial 2006 “Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism”. In February all charges against the activists were dropped, but the case demonstrated internationally the repressive nature of the current right-wing ARENA government. Other possible political murders – such as the slaying of Wilber Funes, a mayor from the leftist FMLN party – have yet to be resolved, raising fear of increased political violence during the lead up to the 2009 Salvadoran elections.

Burma stages a vote while cyclone victims suffer

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma's regime focused its time, manpower and propaganda on winning approval for a new constitution on Saturday to increase the military's domination, while the U.N. and other organizations flew in aid to rescue more than one million neglected cyclone survivors.

Government-controlled TV showed repetitious loops of Burma's leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and other generals handing out aid boxes to victims during stilted events, while mostly ignoring the cyclone's rising death toll.

One aid box bore the name of a rising official, Lt. Gen. Myint Swe, in bold letters that distracted from a smaller label reading: "Aid from the Kingdom of Thailand," according to Associated Press.

The U.S. prepared to fly emergency provisions into the cyclone-wrecked commercial port of Rangoon, on its first cargo flight scheduled for Monday.

But Washington was unable to get Burma's approval to give the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) 10 Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) experts entry visas for Monday's flight, crushing hopes of a major U.S. airlift.

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