This moment is precious. Worrying about the future and obsessing about the past only makes you lose valuable perspective. Feel good now and your future will bring you what you need.
Pisces (Feb. 20 — March 20)
You don't really want to settle for second best. Don't abandon your noble aspirations and beliefs. Maintain your resolve and your power will grow
Scorpio (Oct. 24 — Nov. 22)
Sometimes, once we decide to go down the wrong road, nothing can stop us. If a certain impediment is holding you back, it could be doing you a big favour.
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama coined it and he owns it.
But everyone wants a part of it.
The "change" bandwagon in the 2008 U.S. presidential race is getting rather crowded.
There has been no evidence in his short time in the U.S. Senate, however, that Obama is an agent of change and there is scant evidence in his platform or history of votes to suggest he can effect change faster or further than Hillary Clinton.
The Senate voting records of the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are almost identical. Clinton's health-care proposals are more far-reaching.
There is no daylight between their plans to combat global warming.
Obama might move troops out of Iraq more quickly. Clinton would be more measured in her approach.
Obama, 46, with his soaring, revival-style rally speeches, the cadence reminiscent of the civil rights era and the shoutbacks from the crowd testimonial to the emotions he sparks, is really offering a revolution of moderation.
He wants to change the world – by reaching out to Republicans.
He is a uniter, and has proven to be rather risk-averse during his brief tenure in Washington.
As a marketing strategy, however, his seizure of the mantles of change and hope have been pure brilliance, forcing Clinton, 60, to campaign largely as the killer of dreams, the slayer of hope.
Obama invokes the words of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, rocks to the music on stage, gets the crowd chanting slogans like "Yes We Can," and applauds the audience as they cheer him. His audiences are noticeably younger – at some events in New Hampshire, in fact, too young to vote.
After her loss in Iowa, Clinton brought the relics to the stage, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former NATO commander Wesley Clark.
They are now gone.
When she won in New Hampshire, Bill Clinton, the former president, was not in the camera shot, but 27-year-old daughter Chelsea was front-and-centre.
Yesterday, her campaign posted a Web video of her answering questions from young voters on issues ranging from Darfur to college affordability.
The Obama rallies are a sea of signs reading "Change We Can Believe In" and "Stand For Change."
Clinton counters with her slogan "Ready For Change" and talks of working for more than three decades making change.
Democratic contender John Edwards talks of "real change."
Republicans know a trend when they see one, so Mitt Romney says he is the candidate of change and calls John McCain a Washington insider. McCain says he was responsible for the biggest change of all with his backing of the Iraq surge strategy, a change that saved American lives.
Democrats are now fully engaged in a classic party race between what is known as the "beer track," made up of more pragmatic, middle-class voters concerned with pocketbook issues represented by Clinton, and the "wine track," the more upscale, liberal Democratic class represented by Obama.
To that end, Clinton yesterday unveiled a $70 billion economic stimulus program that she says would help Americans pay their mortgages and home-heating bills.
Obama, on the other hand, is trying to build a movement that transcends traditional, gridlocked petty politics.
Obama must now gird for a "Harting," party parlance for Walter Mondale's withering "Where's The Beef?" attack on Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic race, and guard against going the same route as other inspiring, lofty-goaled would-be nominees such as Eugene McCarthy or even the pre-scream Howard Dean of 2004.
On health care, Clinton would impose mandatory universal coverage during a first term, providing tax credits to working families to make health care more affordable and compelling business to offer insurance to employees or pay into a pool to cover the uninsured. She would finance it largely by raising taxes on the wealthy. She gambled on major change in health care during her time as first lady, and lost.
Obama would provide mandatory coverage for children and "aim" for universal coverage under a $65 billion a year package that he, too, would pay for by raising taxes.
Both would spend $150 billion over 10 years to fight global warming. She would pay for it by eliminating subsidies to oil companies. He would finance his plan by forcing polluting companies to pay for the right to pollute.
Obama has only been in the Senate since 2005 but spent almost half that time campaigning with Democrats during the 2006 mid-term elections or running for the party's presidential nomination.
He championed an ethics reform bill, although critics will tell you he acted more as cheerleader and less as workhorse in the committee trenches with his sleeves rolled up.
Of course, the U.S. Senate is such a hidebound, hierarchical institute where seniority is paramount, no rookie senator has a litany of accomplishments.
He voted for the reauthorization of the U.S. Patriot Act and an energy bill that provided the tax breaks Clinton would eliminate, but against the confirmation of John Roberts, now the U.S. chief justice.
Of course, he opposed the Iraq war in 2002 when Clinton voted in favour, but he said in 2004 he wasn't sure how he would have voted had he been in the Senate.
"There is not much of a record there, but that was also true of John F. Kennedy," says Larry Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia. "Kennedy had a very undistinguished Senate career."
Kennedy was the last U.S. senator to win the White House.
The National Journal, the respected U.S. magazine that tracks the tendencies of senators according to their votes, gave Obama a liberal ranking of 86 on its 100-point scale in 2006. Clinton had a liberal rating of 70.2, but in 2005 they were almost identical, with Obama at 82.5 and Clinton at 79.98.
Its analysis found the two contenders voted the same way in 257 of the 267 votes the two attended in 2007, with Clinton voting more conservatively on two immigration votes, while Obama sided with conservatives on questions of ethics.
Obama voted the party line 97 per cent of the time.
"It's not too surprising then, to see the campaign focused on broad themes – dare one say platitudes? – such as experience and the need for a change," University of California professor Bob Huckfeldt told the Journal.
The final words – this week – on experience versus change come from two old Democrat warhorses.
"We are electing judgment and character, not years on this earth," John Kerry, the party's 2004 nominee, said in endorsing Obama. He told the Las Vegas Sun Obama had been a legislator longer than Clinton, including his years in Illinois.
"Health care didn't pass in 1994, if I recall," he said, in an inelegant dig at Clinton's "HillaryCare" effort.
Bill Richardson had a different perspective. "Whatever happened to experience. Is experience a kind of a leper?" asked the New Mexico governor, former cabinet secretary and UN ambassador.
This week he joined his long-experienced colleagues Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd on the sidelines as former Democratic candidates.
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