Easter Eggs

Happy Easter, for those that celebrate it.

In the absence of big political news today, and given the nature of this Holy Day for Christians, I thought I'd go light on the editorialization and let you hunt for Easter eggs this morning. These eggs are in the form of newsworthy links. All of these links have one thing in common: they elucidate issues which have been presented to the public, for the most part, in the form of sound bites. For example, a 10 minute clip of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's 9/11 sermon is right here. It's worth watching to see if the full context of his remarks changes your mind about the content. It turns out, Wright's most controversial statements were gleened from an interview on Fox News with Ambassador Edward Peck. Check them both out, to understand the full context of the past week's biggest political story.

I thought I'd also offer up the transcript of a recent Dick Cheney interview by the excellent Martha Raddatz of ABC news. This is the interview when Cheney responded to the statistic that 70% of Americans oppose the war by saying, "So?" Decide for yourself if he is measured and accurate, or evasive and arrogant.

Here are a couple of NY Times pieces that educate on the financial crisis. It's heavy sledding, but if you read them, you'll have a good overview of the situation and the choices facing Washington and Wall Street to mitigate the damage. Considerable damage.
A story that got a lot of sound bite attention was the Politico's analysis of Hillary's real prospects to garner the nomination. Here's the whole piece.

And finally, you all know I've been down on the Clinton and McCain campaigns lately. Nothing I see this morning changes that. For McCain's part, the fact that he is making the American taxpayer pay for his presidential foreign policy dog and pony trip is a disgrace. By toting Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, the trip is technically a "co-del", meaning a co-delegate junket as members of the Armed Services committee. The truth is, it's a Presidential campaign tour and we shouldn't have to pay for it. And, if McCain thinks that continued photo ops of him with Lieberman and Graham create a portrait of anything other than the status quo, he's mistaken. Of course, Joe did bail McCain out on the Al Qaeda in Iran pronouncements, so maybe he is useful. The fact that McCain gets a pass from the press on all of this should worry Democrats in the general.

And then there's the Billary campaign. Ol' Billy Boy's at it again with his desire to have "an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country, and people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics" comment. And then the 'what, me? I didn't mean anything by it ' response. And then the outrage by Gen. Tony McPeak's comments calling Bill's statements a replay of "McCarthyism". At least Obama's learning to get a surrogate to match outrageous rhetoric with outrageous rhetoric.

So that's it. No questions. Have a peaceful day. If you want to leave a comment, hit 'comments' below, by pass the Google sign up and hit the nickname or anonymous button.