So President Bush, after 7.5 years in office, has recently decided that he's interested in Israel and serious about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - enough to actually visit Israel personally for the second time in his presidency, the second time in a period of a few short months. Better late than never as they say.

Anyway, as part of a speech commemorating Israel's 60th anniversary, Bush decided to take a swing at Barrack Obama over his suggestion of direct diplomacy with Iran.

President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers:

Hillary Clinton says her economic policies will restore the economic policies of her husband's administration. However both Hillary and her husband failed to demonstrate any economic wisdom or foresight as Alan Greenspan warned of irrational exuberance while the sub prime housing loans and dot com investment bubbles were created and pandered during her husband's administration and both supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization without any conditions such as protecting the environment or labor and property rights to levels that are comparable to western standards.

The U.S. government surplus (generated by taxes raised from the housing and investment bubbles) evaporated once the housing and investment bubbles burst.

That's been the question that has rattled my mind for about a year now . I thought that people had the right to have the freedom of opinion . Especially without having someone look at you funny or think your stupid for how you feel. But I guess thats not the case when I stated that Obama wasn't ready for the White House or this country isn't ready for a African American President .

From the Philadelphia Unemployment Project

An Open Letter

April 10, 2008

Dear Senator Clinton and Senator Obama:

Healthcare has been central to each of your campaigns. As you work here in advance of the April 22nd primary, we wanted to alert you that healthcare is the number one opportunity we have to improve the lives of working Pennsylvanians right now. We, the undersigned, believe your campaigns could advance the cause of Pennsylvania’s reforms, should you choose to make them an issue.

Early last year, Governor Rendell unveiled an ambitious package of reforms known as The Prescription for Pennsylvania (Rx4PA, www.rxforpa.com). Rx4PA would expand access to health insurance with a high quality healthcare plan. With revisions from the House Democrats, that plan is now known as “Access to Basic Care,” and it passed the House this month in Senate Bill 1137.

Rx4PA would also rein in the forces that have driven up the price of insurance in the small group market, reward employers already providing coverage and insure that no one with a pre-existing condition is denied coverage.These also passed the House of Representatives in House Bill 2098 and House Bill 2005.

If these reforms succeed in the Commonwealth, it will make the arguments for either of your national plans much stronger. Rx4PA’s success should also galvanize your allies in Washington while chastening your opponents.

(I wrote this lengthy, un-organized post as a comment on Zorro’s great diary below; I’m reproducing it here, even longer and possibly less organized, but cleaned up a little.)

What does it say that Obama - out of necessity, some would argue - has put the most work into registering new voters? Some thoughts:

I’d signed up to register people to vote on Easter Sunday. When I walked into the office, the twenty-ish volunteer coordinator immediately said: "How do you feel about doing public housing?" I wanted to say, "Well, I feel like a white, overeducated neophyte with no credibility whatsoever," but instead I said "um, sure." I was paired with a tall, friendly, patient African-American guy who actually owned a car and we drove up to the area directly northeast of the main Temple Campus.

We went around to most of the single-family low-rise projects, and knocked on doors; most folks had already registered either before the election season or more recently at one of the transit-stop or Center City locations, and probably half the people were asking for buttons or signs. The sign-up page on my.barackobama.com had said "Rittenhouse Voter Registration," so I'd shaved and tucked in my collared shirt and put on a nice coat; I'm guessing people mistook me for a Mormon missionary (at best), and I could see their suspicion fading into bemusement when they realized that I was the messenger the Obama campaign had decided to send into their community. We gave away all of our signs in the first fifteen minutes, and kids followed us around yelling "Happy Easter!" and "Barack Obama!" and other exciting things.

After about an hour, we made a hesitant decision to go knock on doors in the high-rise apartments on 11th between Norris and Diamond. Most of the guys hanging around outside the front door waved us off, and we went in to check with the security guard on the front desk. She seemed uneasy, and said "you know, I love Obama, but I'm not sure what you should do." After mulling it over, she decided it couldn't hurt, and told us that a) there was only one working elevator and b) we should forget about taking the stairs.

OK, so I took advantage of not having a con-sulting job today to work doing voter registration for the Obama campaign. I picked up a stack of voter registration forms from the office on Germantown Ave. + Pelham St., + headed to the intersection of Germantown + Chelten Aves. I decided to make the trip more productive by stopping along the way and registering voters as I went. I got 5 people to register even before I got to my destination.

When I got to Chelten, I spoke w/the young man who had a registration table there. I asked how he'd been doing, + he said that he'd been so busy that he was running out of forms; I gave him a handful from my stack, + headed up Chelten to try my luck along that route.