After days of hammering at Republican rival Senator John McCain, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama struck a conciliatory note and urged unity in service of a greater good in a speech to college graduates.
Obama was filling in for Senator Edward Kennedy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor last week and had planned to deliver the graduation address at Wesleyan University. Kennedy has endorsed Obama in the nominating contest against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and has campaigned for him.
“We may disagree as Americans on certain issues and positions, but I believe we can be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency, and I believe with all my heart that this generation is ready and eager and up to the challenge,” Obama told this year’s graduating class.
The Illinois senator peppered his speech with references to the Kennedy legacy: former US president John F. Kennedy urging Americans to ask what they can do for their country, the Peace Corps and Robert F. Kennedy talking about people creating “ripples of hope.”
In Puerto Rico, where she hopes for a big primary victory June 1, Clinton told churchgoers that faith has sustained her through her arduous and faltering duel with the ascendant Obama.
Clinton is trailing Obama and has almost no chances of getting the nomination. Some prominent Democrats have been calling for her to step down, fearing that a protracted nomination battle might ruin the party’s changes in the November general election.
The latest to do so was former president Jimmy Carter, who said on Sunday during an interview with Sky News in London that Clinton should abandon her battle by early June.
But former first lady spoke of her determination to stay in the race despite trailing Obama, who picked up three more superdelegates in Hawaii on Sunday, giving him a total of 1,977 delegates, just 49 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination.
Clinton has 1,779.
She also said on Sunday that her comments two days earlier about the long and unpredictable primary process, in which she mentioned the 1968 assassination of senator Robert F. Kennedy, had been taken out of context and twisted into something “completely different — and completely unthinkable.”
Some hearing her on Friday were reminded of the other major assassination of 1968 — of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. — and thought she had made a veiled reference to the possibility that Obama might be killed, leaving her a clear path to the nomination.
On television Sunday, top advisers to both Clinton’s and Obama’s campaigns said they were moving on from the issue.
“This issue is done,” David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, declared on ABC’s This Week.
Clinton is campaigning for Puerto Rico’s 55 pledged delegates to the national Democratic convention. The New York senator is expected to win the contest, thanks partly to her ties to the large Puerto Rican community in her home state.
Later in the day, Clinton waded into the politics of US-Cuba relations, saying there are some promising signs of change under new Cuban President Raul Castro, but more substantive moves must be made.
Cuba, she said, should “take immediate action to demonstrate its good faith” by releasing political prisoners, allow free speech, and hold open and competitive elections.
Republican McCain turned his attention this weekend to the search for a vice presidential running mate. He was hosting at least three potential running mates at his Sedona, Arizona, home — Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is of Indian descent, and his former key rival, ex-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
Obama spent much of the week hammering McCain for opposing a college aid bill for military veterans, part of a strategy to link the conservative Republican to the deeply unpopular Bush administration. But he stepped back from the topic in the midst of the Memorial Day weekend holiday honoring fallen US servicemen and woman.
In his speech Wesleyan’s graduates, Obama paid tribute to Kennedy, saying he has helped provide health care to children, given parents leave time to spend with new babies, raised the minimum wage and let people keep health insurance when changing jobs “and I have a feeling that Ted Kennedy is not done just yet.”
Kennedy’s stepdaughter, Caroline Raclin, is a member of Wesleyan’s Class of 2008. Her mother, Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, attended the ceremony.
Obama, with a presidential campaign appealing to youth and emphasizing change, often evokes comparisons to the Kennedys, particularly Robert F. Kennedy and his 1968 bid for the White House.
Only briefly did Obama veer into campaign territory, rattling off a list of education changes he promised to make as president.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
RSS