Okey doke ... here are the charts, for all three, with the latest birth data available (none of them nailed to birth certificates, unfortunately).

I use Equal Houses with the Ascendant and Midheaven. I also include Chiron and the North Node along with the planets and luminaries. And I include the first six aspects (conjunction, opposition, square, trine, sextile and quincunx) rather than just the first five. The quincunxes (or inconjuncts) are the hot pink lines. Lots of tension in terms of hurt feelings or feeling cheated shows up along those lines, and I think they're just as important as the first five.

Maria

Tracy,

No problem. Yes, I agree that Jupiter Neptune aspects are exactly the "best" (although it will give them "vision"!) - now the question is is there some grounding (Saturn for example!)...

One other thing - one has to be very careful in looking at the charts if one "wants" someone to win because of that is whom one is for. I faced that "dilemma" in 2000 and it was "difficult" to say what I did - I am not going to say whom I voted for, but I had to be very careful in what I said and how I came to conclusions about the election.

Maria,

Thanks!

I will look at the "new" time for Obama over the weeekend...

Hi Dave,

Yes, I do most definitely agree that one has to remain impartial and unbiased when looking at charts. It's probably one of the biggest challenges astrologers face, especially when the chart belongs to someone you know personally or are close to. I can assure you though that this was not the case when I looked at the charts of these delegates.

As I said in my very first post in this thread, I am clueless when it comes to politics and have no idea which of the candidates would make the best president for this country. I have not listened to any one of their speeches and so do not have enough information to form an opinion on who I would like to see win.

I only shared what came to me when I looked at each chart, with no personal attachment to either one of them, I assure you. When I looked at George Bush & Senator Kerry's charts prior to the '04 elections, I could see that George had the winning chart. As politically clueless as I am, I still voted for Kerry although George did win. I had also seen the impeachment issues he would be facing in '06 too.

What do you see when you look at each of the 3 delegates charts, Dave? I would love for you to share your input with us.

Tracey,

I will get back to you about the current primary race betweem Obama and Clinton - as I mentioned at the beginning of the thread I am not going to deal with the November election until after both candidates are "chosen" - and part of that will be in one sense waiting for the schedules of both conventions - one of the things that went "against" Gore in 2000 was that he gave his acceptance speech during a void of course Moon.

I will be looking at what is going on with the two Democratic candidates probably on Monday as I have a day "off" from my normal routine (which I am going to enjoy!)

Always glad to help, Dave.

Too bad nobody warned Al Gore that the Moon would be pussyfooting around while he was speaking!

That shouldn't be a factor this time. Both the Leo Moon and the aspects that night look pretty good to me for the acceptance speech Thursday evening, Aug. 28. I'm just taking the sky as the sky, not comparing it against either candidate's chart at this point.

The deets: The convention is from Monday, Aug. 25, through Thursday, Aug. 28. The mornings, for delegates, are occupied by breakfast meetings and caucuses of various groups or committees. The convening en masse is in the afternoons and evenings.

The convention will open under a Gemini Moon, which goes void of course at Monday, Aug. 25, at 3:52 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time -- probably shortly after the opening. The void ends two and a half hours later when the Moon enters Cancer at 6:28 p.m. MDT.

That afternoon and evening they'll be talking care of business from the Credentials Committee and Rules Committee and naming the convention chairman. I'm guessing the keynote address Monday evening will fall shortly after the void ends, once the Moon is in Cancer, so that the speech is timed for TV coverage from coast to coast.

Tuesday they'll hammer out the platform under that Cancer Moon -- which, astrologically, highlights the nurturing elements of the platform.

However, the Moon goes void again Wednesday evening, Aug. 27, at 6:13 p.m. MDT, with the void lasting until the Moon goes into Leo at 8:51 p.m. MDT. Typically, Wednesday afternoon and evening are the time for the nominating and seconding speeches and roll call vote. So some of that could bog down and turn relatively listless. However, the last Ptolemic aspect the Moon will have made in Cancer, which will be left lingering through the void, is a sextile to Mercury in Virgo. That's a positive sign for communication and thought in service to humanity, so I think that -- plus the natural shared energy of a convention -- will help.

We may not get totally dazzled by Wednesday's nominating/seconding speeches if they're delivered in the void, and no doubt there will be a lot of people, watching the door being closed on their losing candidate, who will be feeling the downer effects of the void. But then it will be gone, before 9 p.m. Mountain Time, and the partying can start ... under a BOOYAH Leo Moon that says, "We rock! We rule! Beneficiently, of course, because we are the lions and lionesses of Leo, royalty of forest and jungle."

Not a bad lunar ingress at all to have happening on Wednesday night, I'm thinking. The vice presidential candidate may also speak that night. He or she would do well to wait until after 8:51 p.m., even if it does keep the East Coasters up late to watch.

That jubilant Leo Moon (paired with the diligent Virgo Sun) lasts throughout Thursday, when the afternoon and evening will see the official nomination of the V.P., followed by the presidential nominee's acceptance speech. It doesn't go void again until late Friday, after everyone will have gone home or on their merry way.

At the time the acceptance speech is given, Jupiter in Capricorn will be trining Saturn in Virgo, bestowing jovial blessing and expanding the practicality, importance and weightiness of it all. Mercury and Venus will be squaring Pluto, which one could see as slightly dicey. I actually kind of like it, though. I think that is the kind of tension: thoughts and communication, plus love and values (Merc and Venus) -- up against powerful Pluto -- that the nominee can use and can go with. Especially when the campaign is about repudiation of the Bush years. The Bush administration is Pluto'd at that point, says I with a nod to Proxymoon for giving us the verb "to Pluto."

So there's my first blush look at the Cosmic Weather Report for the Democratic National Convention. I'll let you take it from there, Dave -- and anyone else who wants to jump in, of course.

Maria

Maria,

Thanks for the info - however, the same sort of thing is needed for the Republicans as well (we have to be "fair"!).

Absolutely, Dave. You should definitely do that.

Here's a link to start with: http://www.gopconvention.com/

Thanks so much for your Cosmic Weather report for the Democratic Convention, Maria. When you compare the aspects to Hillary & Obama's charts, they are pretty evenly matched. The convention begins with an exact trine from Uranus to Hillary's Mercury, her 10th house ruler, and it ends with the Sun applying in a conjunction to Obama's Pluto, which is his 10th house ruler; the Jupiter/Saturn trine doesn't touch either of their charts but neither does the Mercury/Venus square to Pluto; the Leo Moon on Acceptance night will accent Obama's Sun and Hillary's Mars/Pluto conjunction; so it's very hard to tell who has the better shot at winning the nomination. I guess a lot of it will depend on which one of them manages to keep out of the VOC Moon shadows. Can't wait to read your take Dave.

Check out this article about Bill Clinton that was on my AOL homepage today. I do believe this could be what Neptune squaring Hillary's Mercury is all about.

Bill Clinton Alleges Cover-Up
CNN
Posted: 2008-05-26 20:02:08

(May 26) - Former President Bill Clinton said that Democrats were more likely to lose in November if Hillary Clinton is not the nominee, and suggested some were trying to "push and pressure and bully" superdelegates to make up their minds prematurely.

"I can't believe it. It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out," Clinton said at a South Dakota campaign stop Sunday, in remarks first reported by "ABC News."

Clinton also suggested some were trying to "cover up" Sen. Clinton's chances of winning in key states that Democrats will have to win in the general election.

" 'Oh, this is so terrible: The people they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up.' "

Clinton did not expound on who he was accusing.

The former president added that his wife had not been given the respect she deserved as a legitimate presidential candidate.

"She is winning the general election today and he is not, according to all the evidence," Clinton said. "And I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen a candidate treated so disrespectfully just for running."

"Her only position was, 'Look, if I lose I'll be a good team player. We will all try to win, but let's let everybody vote, and count every vote,' " he said.

The former president suggested that if the New York senator ended the primary season with an edge in the popular vote, it would be a significant development.

"If you vote for her and she does well in Montana and she does well in Puerto Rico, when this is over she will be ahead in the popular vote," Clinton said.

"And they're trying to get her to cry uncle before the Democratic Party has to decide what to do in Florida and Michigan," which Clinton said the party would need to do "unless we want to lose the election."

The current requirement to claim the Democratic presidential nomination is 2,026 delegates, a formula that does not take into account delegates from Florida and Michigan, whose contests were not sanctioned by the party because they moved them up earlier on the primary calendar.

But if those votes were counted as cast, Hillary Clinton would still trail rival Barack Obama in the overall delegate count.

The former president said Sunday that the media had unfairly attacked his wife since the Iowa caucuses, repeating an often-used charge that press coverage had made him feel as though he were living in a "fun house."

"If you notice, there hasn't been a lot of publicity on these polls I just told you about," he said. "It is the first time you've heard it? Why do you think that is? Why do you think? Don't you think if the polls were the reverse and he was winning the Electoral College against Senator McCain and Hillary was losing it, it would be blasted on every television station?"

He added, "You would know it wouldn't you? It wouldn't be a little secret. And there is another Electoral College poll that I saw yesterday had her over 300 electoral votes. ... She will win the general election if you nominate her. They're just trying to make sure you don't."

I think that Barack Obama is about 56 delegates short of clenching the nomination. Which explains why the Clintons are now resorting to fear tactics such as the democrats will lose if Hillary isn't nominated. LOL Weird they would say that when it seems to me that she wouldn't be in the position she is in if more people would vote for her than Obama.


This is Obama, Dave



And this is the other guy:



I'm just teasing you, Dave. I have slipped on that name a few times myself. Probably everyone has for the reason that Maria stated.

Tracey, it's the meritocracy argument. Bill is saying that Hill merits the nomination due to ability, including ability to win the general, regardless of the fact that by the rules of the game, Obama is close to clinching the nomination.

The pressure on the superdelegates to declare is intense because, mathematically, the race could be over now if enough of them said what side they're on. But there is also the pressure from the Clinton camp to let everybody have their say: to let every Democratic voter who wants to vote in a primary that counts.

I understand those arguments, and I think the Clintons have some points, but it's also pretty clear that Obama is on track to get the remaining number of delegates (pledged and super) that he needs to win the game under the rules set at the beginning of the game. And I think Bill's being kind of wacky calling everything a cover-up.

You know one thing that's interesting to me? Most of the people who voted in the Dem primaries this year share this in common: it's the first time they ever voted for a woman or an African-American for president. I'm sure there are some who voted for Shirley Chisholm or Jesse Jackson years ago, but for a lot of people, they've got that bond this year. It's a year of change in the long term in the culture, no matter what happens from here on out.

What I find remarkable about Hillary's natal chart is how very Scorpio she is. No wonder she turned into Rocky the warrior determined to go the distance when she got stepped on early on.

Back to the idea of meritocracy, which is how I think the Clintons like to have things set up... From a Merito-cratic perspective, there's a woman of a leadership age with skills and experience up for the job of president, and then there's this young guy with undeniable skills as well, though not quite as deep a resume, and, based on merit and tenure, it would be plain injustice for him to be promoted above her, even if he is more popular. So now she's out to prove that he's not even more popular.

But astrologically, what I bet she finds galling, as a Scorpio, is that he out-strategized her. He worked the caucus states hard and swept them big-time, and she didn't realize that was going to be The Thing that predetermined the outcome of the nomination until it was too late.

I think people in the ruralish, Westernish caucus states (definitely including Colorado here) like to think of themselves as independent indiviudalists. At caucus time, they liked the new guy with the fresh ideas and inspiring rhetoric more than they liked the dyed-in-the-wool party people who are the Clintons.

After Obama won such a long streak of states in a row (including a bunch of caucus states) and people started handing Hillary her hat, then she got her boxing gloves on and started working the media like crazy, and she has had some really big wins these last several weeks.

But even when she has racked up big wins, the superdelegates haven't taken the opportunity to say, "By golly, she's right. She is the better candidate, with the electoral momentum on her side! I'm declaring for Hillary." They've either stayed silent or moved toward Obama, if you look at it in an aggregate sense. That's probably, among other reasons, because her wins are too little too late to catch him in the pledged delegates, and the superdelegates want to end up on the same side as the pledged delegates. Otherwise they would look like party people overturning the results of the election system they set up in the first place.

So at this point, Hillary's last stand has got to be to claim victory in a raw popular vote count, to give the superdelegates a way to feel like they'd be voting with the people instead of against the people by voting for her. But, beyond the problem of how to count votes in the unofficial primaries of Michigan and Florida, there's the fact that a number of caucus states don't report out "popular vote totals," so some or all of those states where Barack won big in caucuses aren't counted in the popular vote totals. For some of those caucus states, popular votes are "imputed, extrapolated, estimated," by whomever is trying to come up with a count, but that doesn't make a lot of sense to me as something to rely on.

About this:
Oof! That's a bum transit to have, isn't it? I'm probably seeing this transit in a different way than you are, but I agree it has bearing in terms of how this campaign has gone for her and where things stand now. Transiting Neptune squaring her natal Mercury (with Mercury also conjunct her Ascendant if the birth time is right) is not a great transit to have for months in the midst of a run for the presidency.

Robert Hand's second paragraph on that transit in Planets in Transit is:

Pretty bad timing for her to have that transit operative this year when she's trying to make the biggest career move anyone could possibly try to make. Even her exaggerating about her Bosnia plane landing was the sort of Neptunian fantasy-influenced communication that transit sets you up for, as Neptune indulges in its ego-busting ways of setting people up for falls.

I was reading over the weekend a bunch of history on kings and queens in Europe and the British Isles in the 1400s and 1500s and all the marrying of one's own relatives and murdering of one's own relatives that went on to resolve the questions of succession to power. Looking at it in more detail than I had before. Some really abominable stuff.

We're past that, anyway! Of course, it remains to be seen if, once the nomination is resolved, Democrats really will unite or will turn on one another and eat their own. Sure has been an interesting race, and I know I've rambled on far too long...

Here's a good story on the journalistic challenge of trying to verify different people's counts of the popular vote.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_inestimable_popular_vote_e.php

Maria

Maria,

Thanks for the link to the GOP convention. I will look at it later....

I have added the chart and the trsnsits for Obama with the new birth time - and the last time what I had to do because of circumstances was to "print" the time map to my graphic software program - this time I was able to scan it, so it should be much cleaner.

The major difference is the positions of the tranisiting planets and while Jupiter in the 2nd house for him was "good" for finances, being in the 11th as also good to make "friends" and I also noted when he started his "run" last year, Jupiter was in his 10th house.

The transits are not that much differnt - with these exceptions:

• Jupiter is semi-sextile and Pluto semi-square his ascendamt. The latter could be a problem with him.
• The transit of Saturn squaring his Moon will last about a month longer into June.

That's about it for now - the last primaries are within a week.

Hi Maria,

I really enjoyed reading your post. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts. This thread has been like reading the cliff notes version of politics, but I'm learning a lot.

I'm not really sure how I take Bill's allegations in that article I posted. He makes a lot of claims, but doesn't tell us why he thinks or believes that these "they" are covering up Hillary's chances of winning. For all we know, the reason could very well be as you suggested - that her wins are too little too late to catch up, so why bother to mention it.

But if Bill does know something that we don't and is just holding back from spilling all the details for whatever reason then these would be just the types of 'behind the scenes scandals' and deceptions working against Hillary's campaigne that the transiting Neptune squaring her natal Mercury might be bringing to her attention. And if Bill is just being wacky in making these allegations then that could be another way this transit is manifesting for her.

Either way you look at it, Neptune square Mercury issues are something she is supposed to be facing in her quest to become the next president (and the first female president at that). If she manages to overcome these challenges and win the nomination in true Scorpio, Mars conjunct Pluto fashion, then I would be one of the first in line to congratulate her. I have a couple of planets in Scorpio and know too well what that Neptune square is like.

Hi fellow political junkies on this thread

As far accusations of polls being squelched, the DNC as well as the complicit frontrunners should all be ashamed at the way Dennis Kucinich was railroaded out of the race despite favorable polls which were being erased out of the media. For instance, ABC or NBC would take a poll as to which candidate did best in a debate, he would win by a lot, and the poll would be taken down from viewing. Some may call it fair competition, others may call it power mongering, and there's karma for that.

I just wanted to make a "comment" about the "end" game that all of the political correspondents are talking about - remember we are smack dab in a Mercury retrograde, and all I will say is what happened in the 2000 general election - in short, it may well take until mid July... The retro is in Obama's 4th-5th and Hillary's 7th...

Yikes! She's so Scorpio, she can't even concede until Saturday. She has natal Sun, Venus, Merc, Ascendant and even Chiron in Scorpio. I do love Scorpios, but one thing they're not particularly known for is being gracious, humble and loving in loss.

I have to just say, straight out, though, I think it was really rude of her not to congratulate Obama on winning the nomination just as soon as he won it.

By Saturday I hope she rises up into her balanced-idealist Neptune in Libra, semi-sextiled to her Mars-Pluto power center in Leo so that she can magnanimously, idealistically and powerfully do what she can to pull the party back together.

It sure has been an interesting primary race. Just call me Cliff.

Here's a link to a Really Good Analysis of what happened in terms of the two camps' campaign strategies.

Maria

Hey,

By Saturday, Mercury will have gone even deeper into its retrograde....

A friend of mine, David Keston, just emailed me Obama's birth certificate which indicates a 7:24 PM birth time...

I have one, attached the link Obama Birth Certificate and the actual image.


I will use it for the general election...

WOOHOOOOOO! Right On! You go, Dave. Please pass my thanks on to your friend. You might want to share the info with AstroDataBank as well.

Maria

Maria,

I will pass on the message - David I am sure has already passed it on to the Astrobank - he knew Lois Rodden well...

Anyway, here is the chart!