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If you’re an Obama fan, read this. If you’re a Clinton fan, read the rebuttal here.

Chinese search engine Baidu.com has Obama on their home page today. Kerry (my wife, in case you’re new here) attended the second democratic caucuses as one of Obama’s delegates a few days ago in Issaquah. There were 36 Obama delegates to Clinton’s 12 - going on to the state caucuses. So WA is definitely Obamaland.

The NYTimes had an article this morning on how kids are being influential among their parents, some of whom are superdelegates.

A former Seattle CEO and friend thinks Obama would win among delegates but Clinton would win the popular vote. The last time I was in Houston and I spent time with around 70 members of my extended Texan family at a reunion, we had a few chats about Politics. What I found was that we had a lot of common ground. And I found that it’s not the democrats that Texas republicans hate, it’s the Clintons. There’s just something about Bill, and by association, Hillary, that gets republicans very riled up.

Can Hilary win the popular vote? No way. The fact that Obama recruits new voters to the caucuses speaks volumes.

But moving away from the negative…

The reason I’m an Obama supporter is because he brings people together behind a common cause.

Hillary’s message is: “I’m an experienced Washington insider who knows how to work the system to your advantage”

Obama’s message is: “Lets all come together around the common cause of making this country great again.”

As my wife says, when I walk away from an Obama speech I’m energized and I want to get out and do something to make things better.

We went to Beaver Lake High School and Caucused today. It was jam packed and old timers were telling us this is the fullest they’ve ever seen it. The table next to us got 50 votes for Obama and only 4 for Clinton. Our table (or precinct) got 25 for Obama and 14 for Clinton. That resulted in 4 delegates for Obama and 2 for Clinton at our table. Kerry was elected as a delegate for Obama so she has to go to the regional caucuses in April and then maybe county and national.

It sounds like Obama took WA by storm today which is really great news and it was awesome getting together with our neighbors and chatting about how much we think Obama rocks.

I think one of the big differentiators with Obama is that he gets you thinking about how you can get involved and how you can help your country. It’s a very Kennedy-like approach to politics (…ask what you can do for your country) rather than Clinton who simply tells you what she’s going to do while she’s in office. It’s the people in a country that make it great, not the politicians and Obama gets that.

Based on the passion of the people I was seeing today, if for some reason the Democratic party superdelegates intervene and elect Clinton as the nominee, it will shatter the party like never before. The folks who support Clinton aren’t as passionate and as vocal as those who support Obama - at least here in Washington and in many other states from what I gather - and my guess is that we’ll all hit the streets and make a lot of noise if something like that happens.

This is a very exciting time for the United States and it reminds me of South Africa in the early 90’s when the ANC came into power and Nelson Mandela was released from prison and took presidency. I was in the Cape Town city center when Mandela spoke for the first time and one senses the same kind of enthusiasm at Obama rally’s that we had back then for someone new and a great change in the direction of our country.

Kerry and I hit the Obama Rally at the Staples Center today at 11am. We got there late and it was already full to capacity - which is 17,000 people. So we decided to hang around outside with a crowd of around 5,000 other folks in freezing rain. The buzz was awesome and when Barack showed up he did a little impromptu speech on the stairs with nervous secret service agents behind him with an SUV with the door open and the engine running. Then they broadcast the speech from inside on the speakers outside. It was more like a rock concert than a political rally.

The message that resonated with me was “We don’t need a disease care system we need a health care system” - talking about preventative maintenance in health care rather than treating illness once they arise.

A few years ago drug companies started moving their focus to ‘lifestyle drugs’ like Lipitor that provide a constant revenue stream for the entire life of the patient. Lipitor is the worlds top selling drug incidentally. Keeping people healthy is not very profitable but treating sick people for their whole lives is very profitable.

The NY Times had an article yesterday on Lipitor and how it is being investigated by a congresional committee. There’s an interesting follow-up article today about how the congressional committee is trying to track down the stunt double that actually did the rowing that Dr Jarvik was supposed to be doing in the Lipitor ads. The NY Times says the rower is from Seattle and is a member of the Lake Washington rowing club and it was filmed locally.

A friend took this photo inside the staples center (right-click and view image for a much larger version)

Obama’s victory speech at Iowa this evening was one of the most inspiring political speeches I’ve ever seen, particularly the second half. Watch it on cpan.org and it’ll be on youtube tomorrow.