McWacko and the Rover: A New Alliance?

A person, who had had his wife and child insulted over a stupid primary, and has anything else to do with the man who did it, isn't any better than the slug who push-polled all the lies.

If Rove had just said that McCain was a whackjob, then McCain could forget it or not. But when the targets are Cindy and his own daughter...what are we to think? Will he stand up for us the way he stood up for his own family?

Does he care more about us than he does them?

What in hell is wrong with this man?

On Friday, a day after Karl Rove donated $2300 to John McCain's campaign, McCain (R-AZ) put aside a longstanding grudge over Rove's famously bold tactics in securing George Bush the 2000 GOP nomination, and said that Rove’s advice would be welcome in his campaign.

"Nobody denies he's one of the smartest political minds in America," McCain said. "I'd be glad to get his advice. I get advice from a lot of people. I'd be happy to have his advice."

The news came just before President Bush praised McCain as a "true conservative" in a Fox News interview on Sunday, responding to a wave of attacks from conservative hardliners such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

"If John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative," Bush said, "And I'll be glad to help him if he is the nominee."

McCain's relationship with the Bush camp has been fraught since the 2000 primaries in South Carolina, when McCain was falsely accused of leaving POWs behind in Vietnam and of 'siring' an illegitimate black child -- actually his adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget -- and his wife, Cindy was accused of having a drug problem.

These attacks have long been attributed to Rove, acting through various GOP surrogate groups, including the group, 'Vietnam Veterans Against McCain,' and the allusively-named Bob Jones University professor, Richard Hand, who authored a mass e-mail claiming that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." The signal event in the negative campaigning was a telephone push-poll which asked voters, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

McCain remarked on Friday, "I've always respected Karl Rove as one of the smart great political minds I think in American politics. I've always respected him. We never had any ill will after the initial South Carolina thing. After we had the meeting with President Bush we moved on. I've seen Karl Rove many times when I've been over at the White House. We've always had pleasant conversations."

A transcript of McCain's remarks is below, followed by the video of the event:

QUESTION: Are there other signs you see that are encouraging to you...

MCCAIN: Oh yeah. A lot of the fundraisers from other camps are coming on board. And yeah we're seeing that coming together really well. We're seeing it.

[Inaudible]

MCCAIN: Who?

QUESTION: Karl Rove?

MCCAIN: Oh I, listen, he ah. Nobody denies he's one of the smartest political minds in America. I'd be glad to get his advice. I get advice from a lot of people. I'd be happy to have his advice.

QUESTION: I was wondering about that, right....

MCCAIN: He beat me. I certainly would be glad to get his advice. I don't think I'd want to revisit how he did it. And I mean that. Not about South Carolina. I mean I don't feel like reliving my defeat.

QUESTION: Are you worried about, he uses very aggressive tactics is that something that--

MCCAIN: I've always respected Karl Rove as one of the smart great political minds I think in American politics. I've always respected him. We never had any ill will after the initial South Carolina thing. After we had the meeting with President Bush we moved on. I've seen Karl Rove many times when I've been over at the White House. We've always had pleasant conversations.

QUESTION: His tactics don't, you don't disapprove of them? They don't make you nervous?

MCCAIN: It's not so much whether I approve of his tactics or not. It's that he has a very good, great political mind. Any information or advice and council he can give us, I'd be glad to have. I don't think anybody denies his talents. So I'd be glad to get any advice and council. We would obviously decide whether to accept it or not.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

They Will Kill Him, If He is Elected.

Someone agrees with us, unfortunately.

Now, who are They.

If we had half a clue, they would be some scared men, right about now and with damn good reason.

I'm telling you, you bastards, DON"T DO IT! If you do, we will spend the rest of our lives hunting you, and we will get your bosses too.

Is it worth it? Is it?

We sure as hell won't have anything left to lose.

(AP) Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing believes Barack Obama would be assassinated if he were elected U.S. president, the British writer said in a newspaper interview.

Asked whether she supported Hillary Clinton or Obama in the presidential race, Lessing told Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter "it doesn't matter," but suggested the two Democrats should join forces in the election.

"It would be best if they ran together. Hillary is a very sharp lady. It might be calmer if she wins and not Obama," Lessing was quoted as saying in comments translated into Swedish.

"He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him," Lessing said in the interview published Saturday.

She did not specify who she believed would kill Obama.

Her agent in London did not answer phone calls seeking comment on Sunday.

Lessing, 88, who won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, is known for her fierce and sometimes contrary statements.

In October, she told a Spanish newspaper that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were "neither as terrible nor as extraordinary" as many people think.

Right About That, too

The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize, praised the British writer for her "skepticism, fire and visionary power."


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Lies, Damn Lies And Poverty Statistics

Say you want a revolution, well, you know...you gotta reason!

How an archaic measurement keeps millions of poor Americans from being counted

By Christopher Moraff

Standing before the House rostrum on the night of January 31, President George W. Bush beamed as he recounted the state of the country’s economic health.

“Our economy is healthy,” the president declared during his State of the Union address. “Americans should not fear our economic future, because we intend to shape it.”

Yeah, right, for you and yours, maybe, but not for the rest of us. You might want to make sure your passport is in order, you jackass!

What shape Bush has in mind is clear. While the administrators of the president’s economic policies champion 11 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, Bush-mandated tax cuts ensure that the government will continue to make less while the rich and large corporations eagerly fill their coffers. In 2005, federal revenues were just 17.5 percent of GDP, 1 percent less than the previous 50-year average. By contrast, the Feb. 12, 2005 Economist reported that in 2004, after-tax corporate profits reached their highest level as a proportion of GDP in 75 years.

In the meantime, everyday Americans are spending more than they make. For the second straight year, personal savings have been in the red, a phenomenon that has only happened once before, at the height of the Great Depression. Research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the indebtedness of U.S. households has risen nearly 36 percent over the last four years. As a result, the gulf between the “haves” and “have nots” is reaching crisis proportions.

Compounding the crisis is an archaic method for determining America’s poverty rate, which is then used to formulate the funding of programs that alleviate poverty. When President Bush sat down with his advisors to draft his FY 2007 budget, it’s debatable whether he took the time to examine the national poverty statistics provided each year by the Census Bureaus. What’s not debatable is that the Census Bureau’s methodology is woefully inadequate.

The current method for measuring poverty in the United States was developed in 1963 by a young statistician for the Social Security Administration named Mollie Orshansky. Using data from a 1955 Department of Agriculture survey, Orshansky developed a set of thresholds that set a poverty line at three times the annual cost of feeding a family of three or more under Agriculture’s “low-cost budget.” She developed the thresholds purely for her own research and said at the time that her data’s limitations would yield a “conservative underestimate” of poverty.

At that, Orshansky’s work might well have passed into history. But on January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson uttered the famous words: “This Administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” It was a war Johnson intended to win, but missing was an official yardstick for gauging the problem and its ultimate resolve.

Not just any measure would do. Rather, the administration required a threshold that was sufficiently conservative to render eradication of poverty attainable—winning the war by moving up the finish line. Orshansky’s model fit the bill. But first, the Office of Economic Opportunity substituted the Agriculture Department’s “economy food plan,” which was still another 25 percent lower than the “low cost budget” originally chosen by Orshansky. Almost immediately, the new thresholds had an effect, and by 1968, the nation’s official poverty rate had dropped by more than 10 million.

Forty years later, with the War on Poverty no closer to being won, the Census still relies on the Orshansky Thresholds to calculate each year how many Americans live in poverty. That number then determines the nature and distribution of an array of federal policies and programs aimed at addressing the issue.

As critics have pointed out for decades, limitations of the Orshansky formula are manifold. For one, food doesn’t account for one-third of a family’s budget today, making it an unrealistic cost-of-living measure. The model also fails to take into account housing, transportation or health care—which together can amount to more than triple the average cost of food. Add in regional variations, childcare costs and the growth of single-parent families, and it’s fair to say that the Census Bureau is systematically under-counting the number of poor Americans.

Census data released this past August suggests that the number of Americans in poverty grew slightly in 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available) to 12.7 percent from the 12.5 percent recorded the previous year, representing about 37 million Americans. Since 2000, the number of people living in official poverty has increased by 5.4 million. But according to experts, that number vastly underestimates the real total. Duke University sociology professor David Brady puts it this way: “Each August we Americans tell ourselves a lie. The entire episode is profoundly dishonest.”

Brady says that based on his calculations the real number is closer to 18 percent—or 48 million Americans currently unable to afford the most basic necessities. Less conservative estimates have put the numbers of poor at 25 percent, or more than 70 million Americans.

Robert T. Michael, a renowned public policy scholar at the University of Chicago, explains the shortcomings: Orshansky “set a target level of income for a family of four at $3100 in 1963 based on evidence that she put together that basically was using 1955 data. That exact same number—augmented only by cost of living—is the official measurement of poverty today. If they’d done that at the time of Abraham Lincoln, you know, set a rate something like 100 years before, then we’d have a really low level of poverty today.”

What this means in real numbers is that the average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2004 was an annual income of $19,307. It was $15,067 for a family of three; $12,334 for a family of two; and $9,645 for individuals. “It’s really egregiously in error,” Michael says.

In 1992, at the prompting of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the National Academy of Sciences formed a panel to examine the poverty thresholds. Michael was asked to chair the panel.

After three years of work, in 1995 the panel released its report, “Measuring Poverty: A New Approach,” which proposed a number of reforms, notably a change to a measure adjusted regionally that takes into account variations in the cost of housing. But nobody in the federal government seemed ready to budge.

“We’ve gotten some movement and a lot of attention,” Michael explains, “but it hasn’t changed anything because politicians are politicians.” He blames the interests of the states—which have become financially dependent on the status quo—and an unwillingness of any administration to accept such a drastic rise of poverty on their watch.

“If they wanted to change it, it would be pretty easy to do,” agrees Brady. “The real reason it hasn’t been changed is because of politics.”

Christopher Moraff is a Philadelphia-based writer and photographer. A frequent contributor to In These Times, he has also written for the American Prospect Online, Boulder Weekly and Entrepreneur Magazine, among other publications.

More information about Christopher Moraff

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

CBS News Reporting: Barack Obama Leads,

..even with superdelegates

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com February 11, 2008

Democratic Race

Current Delegate Count:

BIDEN	0
CLINTON	1,131
DODD	0
EDWARDS	26
GRAVEL	0
KUCINICH	0
OBAMA	1,134
RICHARDSON	0

CBS News Delegate Count as of Feb. 11

CBS Delegate Count Includes Estimate of Superdelegate "Pledges"

With the decisive weekend sweep of four states and the Virgin Islands by Barack Obama, he has passed Hillary Clinton in the crucial, popularly elected, pledged delegates. This is the first time since Iowa that he has been in that position.

As we noted in a previous BuzzFlash Editor's Blog, because of the way in which Democratic delegates are finally allocated -- and because the number of superdelegate "pledges" are tallied by individual news organizations -- delegate counts for the Dems vary by news organization.

But here are two to look at:

CBS: 1134 for Obama and 1131 for Clinton

CNN: 1148 for Clinton and 1121 for Obama

CNN Delegate Count Projections as of February 11

Hillary Clinton

Pledged: 924

Superdelegates: 224

Total: 1,148

Barack Obama

Pledged: 986

Superdelegates: 135

Total: 1,121

Taking a closer look at the CNN figures, which put Clinton ahead of Obama in total delegate votes (including "pledged" superdelegate commitments), Obama is ahead among popularly elected delegates (excluding the appointed superdelegates) by 986 delegates to 924 for Clinton. This Obama advantage in the popularly elected delegates is likely to increase over the next few weeks until the "showdown" in Texas and Ohio. But the outcome of even those races -- if Obama continues with much momentum -- remains unclear. Remember the "Giuliani" fiasco from seeing others roll up delegates in a series of wins.

Clearly, the race is entering a stage where the two campaigns are likely going to risk the nomination based on their respective strategies over the next three weeks.

Both campaigns are going to continue to joust over positioning the issue of the role of the superdelegates, particularly if Obama emerges, at the end of the state primary voting, with a larger number of pledged delegates.

The key unknown, if Obama continues to rack up the majority of contested states by the crushing margins of the past weekend through the March 4th Texas and Ohio primaries (which also includes Vermont and Rhode Island voting on that day), is if the momentum built up in such a scenario starts to impact the outcome in the March 4th states to the detriment of what is perceived as more favorable demographics for Clinton.

In what was expected originally to be a "walk-away with the nomination" on Super Tuesday run for Hillary Clinton, we have ended up with a race that will go down to possibly Pennsylvania on April 22, or beyond.

We are in uncharted and uncertain territory now. This is a campaign of two contrasting narratives and demographic bases, that nonetheless are evolving, as the jousting for delegates progresses.

It's certainly a race -- with all its crosscurrents of generational divisions, gender and race -- that political scientists will be studying for a long time to come.

But keep your eye on that pledged delegate count. At this point, Clinton has the edge with the superdelegates. But a large number of the uncommitted superdelegates are likely to hold back now, given that the race is so close.

And then there are those 26 Edwards delegates in the wing that we first posted about -- and that both Clinton and Obama are personally meeting with Edwards to discuss (as in seeking his endorsement). And the question of Michigan and Florida is still out there.

There is no question of Michigan and Fla. They broke the rules and the DNC punished them for doing so. That's it! Simple. If they are seated at the convention, after all the candidates were told that Florida's and Michigan's delegates would not be able to vote, it would be like crowning Senator Clinton, who campaigned as much as she could in those states, without breaking the rules, tip-toeing on the edges.

Memo to Howard: Don't let this happen. Stop it now! If this happens it will tear the Democratic Party apart, just when we need them to be unified and listening to the people.

The family feud within the Democratic Party is going to continue for awhile, alas.

But take heart in this. In almost every state, record breaking numbers of people are swarming to vote in the Dem primaries and caucuses. There is an excitement, hope and fervor that should make us all proud.

It would if there weren't all these shenanigans going on. If I get the slightest suspicion that the Clintons are stacking the deck, I will not vote for Hillary in November. I'm sick and tired of cheaters in the White House. Senator Clinton should know just how I feel. Betrayed! That will turn to anger. Then Heaven only knows.

I planned to vote for Edwards. Then he dropped out. So, I voted for Barak. I really didn't care one way or the other. But I do now. DON"T CHEAT!

We are engaging in the most fundamental act of democracy; we are voting for who will represent us in the White House. We feel empowered and passionate.

I would if I trusted anything about those machines and scanners. I expect some major hanky-panky, if not in the primary, then in the general.

That is a very good sign indeed.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

BuzzFlash Afternote: "As far as all the different delegate numbers that you see for Obama and Clinton, there is good reason for that. They are largely just estimates. In many states, final delegate allocations are determined at a follow-up state party convention or state party meeting. The counts won't change dramatically, but they will change. (This explains the differing claims over whether Clinton or Obama won one more delegate in Nevada. This won't be finally determined until a Nevada state party convention a little further down the road.) Also, the superdelegate 'pledges' of support are just that. They aren't recorded by the DNC, but kept manually by various media organizations."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

National Vote Plan: Getting Around The Electoral College

Plan would sidestep Electoral College

States Consider Plan That Would Force Electoral College to Choose According to nation-wide Popular Vote

NGUYEN HUY VU
AP News

Feb 10, 2008 14:16 EST

If John R. Koza gets his way, American voters will never again have to wonder about the workings of the Electoral College and why it decides who sits in the White House.

Koza is behind a push to have states circumvent the odd political math of the Electoral College and ensure that the presidency always goes to the winner of the popular vote.

Basically, states would promise to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most support nationwide, regardless of who carries each particular state.

"We're just coming along and saying, 'Why not add up the votes of all 50 states and award the electoral votes to the 50-state winner?'" said Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote Inc. "I think that the candidate who gets the most votes should win the office."

The proposal is aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2000 election, when Al Gore got the most votes nationwide but George W. Bush put together enough victories in key states to win a majority in the Electoral College and capture the White House.

Or Did He? The answer is no, he did not. His is an illegitimate administration, We ought to start treating it like one.

So far, Maryland and New Jersey have signed up for the plan. Legislation that would include Illinois is on the governor's desk. But dozens more states would have to join before the plan could take effect.

The idea is a long shot. But it appears to be easier than the approach tried previously — amending the Constitution, which takes approval by Congress and then ratification by 38 states.

The Electoral College was set up to make the final decision on who becomes president. Each state has a certain number of votes in the college based on the size of its congressional delegation.

Often, all of a state's electoral votes are given to whomever wins that state's popular vote. For instance, even someone who wins New York by a single percentage point, 51-49, would get all 31 of the state's electoral votes.

This creates some problems.

One is that candidates can ignore voters in states that aren't competitive. If the Democrat is clearly going to win a state, the Republican has no reason to court its minority of GOP voters there and instead will focus on other states.

Another problem is the possibility of a result like that in 2000, where one candidate gets more votes overall but the other candidate gets narrow victories in just the right states to eke out a majority in the Electoral College.

National Popular Vote says its plan would change all that.

"What's important to the country is that it would make presidential campaigns a 50-state exercise," said Koza, a Stanford University computer science professor.

Here's how it would work:

States forge an agreement to change the way they allocate general election votes. The agreement would take effect once it's been approved by states with a majority in the Electoral College, or 270 votes.

At that point, the states would begin awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who carries each state.

If the candidates tied in the popular vote, each state would give its electoral votes to the candidate who carried that particular state — basically the same system used now.

There are critics. The downside, they argue, is that a close presidential election would require recounts not just in one or two key states, but throughout the entire country.

They also say it would further reduce the influence of small states as politicians focus on such places as voter-rich California, New York and Texas.

"Any way you look at it, I think smaller populations have a greater voice under the current system than they would under a national popular vote system," said North Dakota state Rep. Lawrence Klemin, a Republican who voted against joining his state in National Popular Vote's agreement.

But why should a state with a population of 35 have the same influence as a state with 6,000?

It might be more difficult, but getting rid of the Electoral College is the best thing to do if we want our votes to count. I live in a state where taking the time to vote is almost a useless exercise (Red as blood and Diebold in every county), but if my votes could be added to those in New York, Vermont, Oregon and Washington, my vote would count, without the interference of the Electoral College deciding that just because a candidate gets more votes in my state, my vote, for the other candidate fails to matter, I have just been disenfranchised.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has not decided whether to sign his state's legislation to join the plan, his office said. When he was in Congress, Blagojevich co-sponsored a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College in 2000.

Legislation endorsing the National Popular Vote plan was passed in California and Hawaii but vetoed by their governors. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it would run "counter to the tradition of our great nation, which honors states' rights and the unique pride and identity of each state."

Oh, bullshit. When we vote for our state officials we are voting as a state. When we vote in national elections, we are voting as a nation. Besides, what the hell do you know about the Electoral College, Ahnuld, and why it was founded. It had nothing to do with honor and pride. Those seem to be two words you like to use when you don't have a freakin' clue what you are talking about.. Why don't you tell the truth. If the popular vote in the nation was what counted, the GOP would win another election when hell freezes over.

Koza believes the agreement proposal would standardize the way states award their electoral votes, give every voter equal influence and keep candidates from ignoring some states in favor of battleground states like Ohio and Florida.

He noted that neither presidential candidate visited Illinois in 2004, even though it has a population of about 12.8 million.

"The Republicans wrote it off and the Democrats took it for granted," Koza said, "and that's typical of two-thirds of the states."

___

On the Net:

National Popular Vote: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

Source: AP News

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Who Ya Gonna Vote For And Why?

RAW STORY has an article claiming that the Goopers are hoping for an Obama nomination, because they are afraid of going up against the Clintons and their sure they can take Obama.

Ok, maybe so. But why? The Clintons never were all that good at going up against the Goopers if you ask me? They won in '92 mainly because people were tired of the Reagan/Bush Era and the economy was sinking into a recession. George H.W. Bush was one of the worst presidents we have had in recent collective memory. Most people had, by then, figured out that it was Poppy that was really the man calling the shots with Iran/Contra. He didn't even act like he wanted to win, The camera shot of him glancing at his watch during the town hall meeting debate was a picture worth a thousand words.

Bill Clinton had wanted to be president since he was born and he would work very hard to get it. What else he would do, I don't know. He didn't cause the hairs on the back on my neck to stand up nor alarm bells to go off in my head. But neither did Junior. I don't like him now, but I voted for him in 1992. Wrong move, if what I wanted then was authenticity. Bill Clinton is the most inauthentic person to run for office in a long time. Does anyone know, 'til this day, what he really stands for, other than getting himself and, now, Hillary elected?

But the country was not in serious trouble then. I hadn't begun my long study of what's wrong with America and how it can be fixed and transformed. It must be transformed! I didn't vote for him in 1996. Couldn't bring myself to even look at Bob Dole let alone vote for him, so I skipped it. Had I been at home on election day, instead of out of state, I would probably have done my favorite write-in: Nobody.

Mostly he was very good at going along with gooper programs, like welfare reform and getting himself impeached for one of the dumbest stunts I've seen, other than on "Jackass," the few times I watched a few minutes of it. I remember rank and file Republicans being furious with Clinton for adopting, practically, their entire platform.

If he had outlawed abortion, they would have killed him.

He is responsible for all the corporate mergers that have led to fewer news outlets, banking institutions and all those free trade treaties leading to exploitative jobs in foreign lands and far fewer jobs in the U.S.

As one Democrat once said, "Bill Clinton is the best republican president we've ever had." (albeit, moderate.) The GOP was almost forced to come out as the Nazi Party in 2000 to seem like republicans. Fortunately, for them. they had plenty of just the sort of people they needed and they had a good head start, since Bill lost Congress to them and Newt Gingrich (shutter) in 1994 by stunning numbers. If anyone deserved the presidency it was Bill Clinton. He worked for it all his life, he is smart (usually) and, when one doesn't look to close, he is a charming, clever man who got on well with the leadership of other nations. (I can't help but wonder how well he is getting on with them now, in his business dealings with some of them.) These rumors worry me.

When he left office, we had a surplus and were looking at paying down the debt and shoring up Social Security for another 1/2 century. His campaign slogan was "It's the Economy, Stupid." He, or someone around him had the foresight to see recession coming long before the rest of us did and in good time to make it a light one. So, I guess he did a fine job on the one thing that was said over and over. He certainly didn't do just the opposite, like Junior.

But here's the thing that bothers me the most out about the Bill Clinton.He goes out of hi s way to blame the media for the whole Monica mess. He is right to do so. The news media behaved horribly. But he let's the Rethugs off the hook. Why?

He has been up at Walkers point sailing with Poppy Bush, current head of America's number one crime family, among other things. He said he wanted to fashion his "ex-presidency like that of Jimmy Carter's. I admit I had to LOL when I heard him say it. How many millions has he made giving speeches? How much of that goes to charitable organizations? No, there is nothing illegal about asking for a million a speech. Some folks can afford that, I guess. It's just unseemly for a statesman and ex-president. It was even more unseemly when Reagan did it. It seems to have set a precedent and a million was worth a lot more then than it is now.

Just kidding about the question in the Title. I was raised to believe that a person's vote is private. No one has a right to ask or know who anyone else votes for.

Having said that; I am going to vote on the candidate I believe will do the best job on the issues I care about; the war, the economy (though I doubt seriously that anyone can stop the economic meltdown we are only beginning to see the early signs of now. It was designed that way.), healthcare, safety nets for the working poor and I mean real ones that one doesn't have to go through humiliation after humiliation to get. I want a president that isn't so far from ordinary American life that he/she doesn't know how to pump gas or swipe a check card, let alone hire people that can run FEMA. I want an administration that reflects America and knows the trials and tribulations of the working poor, the disabled, the elderly and, now the middle class and has some idea of how to help us fix this mess.

I want a president who is believable, honest, and only ruthless in my defense against those who really would or have harmed me and other Americans, not in the defense of the multinational corporations. I want a president who is not afraid to surround him/herself with intellect and "no men/women" and, yet, can think for him/herself.

I want authenticity in my president, because it is the only thing that we can use for a foundation upon which we can build a new America and that is what lies ahead of us. The old one is all but destroyed and BushCo still have over eleven months to make everything quite impossible for the next president. So, the next president will have to make the people a part of the movement in which he/she believes. He/she must be creative enough to find places for all kinds of people to work in his/her movement, both volunteer and paid. There is so much to be done, the thought of it is overwhelming. Any man or woman who honestly believes that he or she can fix this mess by themselves, with only their staff, is certifiable.

The man or woman who says we are going to do this together and then goes back to Washington to send out the same damnable emails in which they ask only for money, never talent, never ideas will stay in Washington, if they're lucky, but hopefully, not as our president.

These are times like no other we have ever faced, which is one reason polls are off and pundits are confused, that and the fact that some rank and file goopers have been told told to lie to pollsters, just to add that ingredient they love more than anything, chaos.

(Speaking of devil, where is old Karl, these days and what's he up to? My bet would be finding ways of creating chaos everywhere he can, and that would include the Democratic primaries.)

Our economy is already on the verge of crashing. If we continue in Iraq and don't pass universal health care for all Americans, we can line up at the soup kitchens and pray for FDR to whisper a lot in someone's ear. (Those of us who are dying and cannot afford healthcare without getting threatening letters from hospitals, should make every effort to die on the steps of the Capitol.) Is there a law against that? After over 7 years of BushCo, I wonder if there are any laws left that protect the people from the government and the corporations. Is there any difference?

Anyone who was really serious about healthcare should have jumped on it as soon as Junior and the Dick started talking about Saddam's bioweapons. I was waiting for Hhillary to do just that. It should have been an amendment on the war resolution she signed. If anyone has bioweapons, including us, apparently, since the only bioweapons that have been used lately came from our own lab in Maryland, and were used in an attempt to assassinate the Democratic leadership of the Congress. It is a matter of national security to have national healthcare.

People who have flu-like symptoms may wait for days to see a physician or go to a hospital ER on the weekend, when they are off work, by that time they are very sick, and probably on their death-beds. Just think how many people could have been infected by God-knows-what by then, and have gone on to infect how many more and so on and so on. Most people who have flu-like symptoms don't bother with the doctor anyway. The flu is caused by a virus. antibiotics won't do any good. Most folks, who can afford to, stay home. But the people who fall into our lower socio-economic working class can't afford such luxuries as staying home when they are sick, so they flip your burgers, wait on you in stores and at the convenient store where you buy gasoline and, of course Starbucks.

So, What do you all think? Who is the GOP for and does anyone care?

NPR host thinks GOP 'agenda' is to help Obama win Dem nomination

02/10/2008 @ 10:44 am

Filed by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert

Many political insiders and pundits seem to be more interested in whom the Republicans want to win the Democratic presidential nomination than anyone else.

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Talk show host Rush Limbaugh recently said he wants to raise money for Senator Hillary Clinton in order to "unite the party," while Ann Coulter dislikes Republican frontrunner John McCain so much that she - seriously or not - said she may vote for Clinton. However, the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corps. empire, endorsed Obama in the New York primary.

On Fox News Sunday, NPR's Juan Williams told The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol that he thought Republican analysts want Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee because they actually believe he will be easier to defeat than Clinton.

"I think Bill Kristol is being very supportive of Mr. Obama, but you have an agenda," Williams charged. "You guys think it's easy to beat Barack Obama going forward."

Brit Hume, the Washington managing editor for Fox News, objected, saying, "Barack Obama is not the favored nominee among the Democrats for the Republicans. They want to run against Hillary Clinton."

"The polls are very easy and clear on this," Kristol added. "John McCain is the strongest Republican nominee. Barack Obama is the strongest Democratic nominee. Obama consistently runs 3, 4, 5 points ahead [of Clinton against McCain]. You find me one intelligent uncommitted Republican or Democratic who thinks Hillary Clinton is a better candidate than Barack Obama."

Fox's Chris Wallace joked, "I thought he was going to say find one intelligent Republican. A question to be answered later."

Blogger David Seaton also fears that many Democrats are being 'Punk'd' into believing that the right fears Obama more than Clinton.

"Peggy Noonan, who wrote some of Reagan's best speeches, is the right wing's Maureen Dowd: Irish, beautiful, witty, subtle and dangerous," Seaton notes. "In today's Wall Street Journal, she joins such arch-conservative pundits as George Will and David Brooks in praising Barack Obama and favoring him for the Democratic nomination."

According to the expatriate blogger, "I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to smell a rat here."

"It is this simple: in recent decades the Clintons are the only Democrats that win elections against Republicans... They don't want to ever face them again, no more complicated than that," Seaton blogs.

The following video is from Fox News Sunday, broadcast February 10, 2008:

Transcript via closed captions :: senators mccain and clinton previewing what the debate in the general election this fall may sound like. and it's time now for our sunday regulars, brit hume, washington managing editor of fox news, and fox news contributors mara liasson of national public radio, bill kristol of "the weekly standard," and juan williams also from national public radio. well, let's look at the results from last night and yesterday in the democratic race and here they are. obama wins in louisiana by a wide margin. obama wins in nebraska by more than 2-1. and obama also wins big in washington state. and as of this morning, our latest count gives clinton a 25, believe it or not, 25 delegate lead out of more than 2,000 who have been chosen so far. so, brit, given all of that, where does this race stand now and do you see either of these guys, clinton or obama, with an edge? :: the short-term immediate outlook will be that obama will gain on her further because the chesapeake primaries are right in this area and obama figures to do very well. :: that's maryland, virginia and d.c. :: right. he figures to do well in those. well enough in those that he may well overtake her by that time. the next one up from that one is wisconsin, which looks like a good state for obama as well. he may soon be in the lead even if you count the super delegates where she has, you know, enjoyed a lead. and the super delegates are free to change their allegiance. it's clearly advantage obama. :: the clinton people are prepared to come out of the next round behind. i don't think it's just lowering expectations. i think he's in a very good position to overtake her. i think in the end, though, even after ohio, texas and pennsylvania, the three big firewalls she's counting on, in texas, a lot of hispanic voters, that's her coalition, the clinton people expect that this is going to come down to super delegates, which is an amazing scenario, that it's going to be potentially unelected officials, now obviously there are members of congress and governors and senators who are part of the super delegate pool, often they just vote with the way their state or district went. there are a lot of unelected super delegates who aren't accountable to any voters. . :: and they're all unpledged. :: not all of them. some of them are pledged. as brit said, they can still change their mind. harold dickey is a super delegate. :: so is bill clinton. i think we know how he's going to go. i think we know how he's going to go. he could shift depending how this race goes. before we get to the super delegates and the possible mess there, do you agree with the calendar that the rest of february looks pretty good for obama but march with ohio and texas, bill, and then -- i can't believe we're talking about it, pennsylvania on april 22, that those all probably trend a little bit towards clinton? :: well, they do right now, but they're further off than the elections on tuesday, and that's a huge advantage for obama. i think brit made a very important point. it is likely on tuesday night that obama will be head in delegates, even including the super delegates. she has a 100 delegate lead so far with super delegates. he's ahead with elected delegates. he's ahead with the popular vote that's been cast. exclude michigan and florida which were taken off the table. it could be a big moment tuesday night. when people see obama in the lead for the first time, he's never been in the lead, because the super delegates and clinton have had that cushion, when people see obama in the lead in elected delegates and popular vote, i think you may see polls switching in texas and ohio and obama's campaign will have a ton of money to go on the air in texas and ohio and persuade those working class white voters and hispanic voters that they might want to reconsider. :: juan, let's talk about the bigger picture here. this is obviously going to be very close for a long time and some top democrats are now getting worried about a mess or a train wreck, as some of them are calling it. you'll have super delegates who are unpledged who might vote against the democratically expressed will of their states. you've got, as bill mentioned, michigan and florida which were stripped of any delegates because they moved up ahead of super tuesday. now the question is who's going to be representing them? are they going to have to vote again? is there a potential here if this race stays very close and ends up going into may, june, august with the convention, of a real train wreck for the democratic party? :: well, i guess there's a possibility, but howard dean, the chairman of the party, said this week the party can't afford it. and that he would intervene at some point and literally create some sort of settlement, i guess by going to the super delegates and working with the candidates, and i guess -- :: how does he do that? :: i don't know. but there's the possibility, i guess, of a ticket or some kind of accommodation down the way. but the problem i think is that what you're looking at right now is that among the democrats, especially the way that it's breaking out racially, leads to the kind of civil war that everybody wants to avoid. if you look at the results yesterday from louisiana, barack obama did better than 80% of the black vote, half of the voters were black in the democratic primary yesterday in louisiana. he gets 80%. mrs. clinton gets about half, a little more than half of the white voters. so what you're seeing here is that black and white are splitting in a way that i think is untenable if you want to hold together the coalition of going forward. obviously, the field favors democrats, but it's very difficult. i think bill kristol is being very supportive of mr. obama, but you have an agenda. you guys think it's easy to beat barack obama going forward. one of the discussions that took place this week is obama, when mitt romney went on about his silliness about you've got to get out of the race in order to allow the republicans to come together and fight the war on terror, obama said the same old rhetoric, fear, division. :: let's turn to the republicans. i'll give you a chance to respond to that and everything else you want to say, bill. excuse me, in a moment. let's turn to the republicans and the race on that side yesterday. in louisiana, huckabee edges out mccain. in kansas, a much bigger win for huckabee over mccain, but in washington state, a narrow victory for mccain. as for the delegate race in the gop, mccain still has, still enjoys a big lead over mike muck bee -- huckabee. president bush in our interview said it seems pretty straight forward that mccain has a job to do. given those victories, three out of four victories for huckabee after mccain was the presumptive nominee, does he have more work to do than the president may think? :: he'll have to keep campaigning. the mathematical odds against huckabee are long, but mccain will still have to beat him. huckabee shows no signs of getting out. it won't be contentious. they both promised that. huckabee probably promised it first. i would say this in terms of the activists in the republican party on the right who are disturbed about john mccain. they now want him to dance to their tune and do it again and again and really prove to them that he's okay. the truth is they'd like to see him elected and not see the democrat elected, they ought to let john mccain do whatever he needs to do. in other words, they should not force him into a fight to solidify his base. they ought to let him have leeway now to move to the center center, an area where he has some credibility, which would give him a better chance of winning the election. i don't think they will, but that's what they ought to do. :: i don't think they can do that. they would have to coalesce around another candidate. they were too late to do it around romney. other than talking a lot on talk radio that they have any point of pressure from mccain. :: maybe we're reaching too much into it, mara, the fact that after this week, when everybody -- at least we're all saying mccain's the nominee, that he loses two out of three races yesterday. :: huckabee has done very well in the south. huckabee has a kind of real niche of the party where he does really well. when you look forward, how is he going to make up that gap? he's about three times -- mccain has about three times as many delegates as him. i don't see him as the kind of opponent or threat to mccain that even mitt romney was. :: i guess i'm not talking, bill, so much about whether or not huckabee can beat mccain, but does it show some weakness on the part of mccain? :: a little bit. it's pretty common. clinton did this. jerry brown won a primary or two. dukakis did this. i think mccain is pretty well situated. he's got an opponent who will be very polite to him. mccain will win primaries on tuesday. i think he's in pretty good shape. :: the democrats are looking forward to running against mccain saying, listen, mccain is just a third term for president bush. do you really want a third term? do you want an extension of the war in iraq? do you want someone who knows nothing about the economy, says he knows nothing about the economy, bought alan greenspan's book to learn about the economy. you can see the shape of this. and obama says he'll represent change. he's a 46-year-old versus a 71-year-old. clinton says she's the one who's going to bring the country together compared to mccain. i think the democrats are thinking, well, let the right wing attack john mccain right now. there's no way john mccain gets back to the center while he's trying to please brit hume and the right wing. :: didn't you hear what i just said? :: i did. i agree with you. :: here's another point about that. first of all, john mccain is not the favored nominee of the republican party for the democrats. they all want to run against mitt romney. second point. barack obama is not the favored nominee among the democrats for the republicans. they want to run against hillary clinton. :: there's a lot of -- the polls are very easy and clear on this. john mccain is the strongest republican nominee. barack obama is the strongest democratic nominee. :: where did you get that data from? they're both -- clinton and obama both run about equal against john mccain. :: that's not true. obama consistently runs 3, 4, 5 points ahead. you find me one intelligent uncommitted republican or democratic who thinks hillary clinton is a better candidate than barack obama. :: i thought he was going to say find one intelligent republican. a question to be answered later. thank you all. thank you panel. see you next week. up next, the most eventful week

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Obama Sweeps the Weekend And In A Crushing Way

CNN Big Board; tracking the primary wins and losses

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#ME


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Creationists Invade England.

From ABC News:

Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin was born and where he published his 1859 classic.

Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.

Not to mention the fact that teaching much of the Bible is child abuse

Schools are increasingly a focal point in this battle for hearts and minds. A British branch of Answers in Genesis, which shares a Web site with its American counterpart, has managed to introduce its creationist point of view into science classes at a number of state-supported schools in Britain, said Monty White, the group's chief executive.

"We do go into the schools about 10 to 20 times a year and we do get the students to question what they're being taught about evolution," said White, who founded the British branch seven years ago. "And we leave them a box of books for the library."

Creationism is still a marginal issue here compared with its impact on cultural and political debate in the United States. But the budding fervor is part of a growing embrace of evangelical worship throughout much of Europe. Evangelicals say their ranks are swelling as attendance at traditional churches declines because of revulsion with the hedonism and materialism of modern society.

I really thought that the Europeans had more sense than this. What are they putting in the water supply over there? Stupid Juice?

No one believes that Darwin's theory is completely right. That's why it's called a theory.

Creationism is even worse. It claims to be the absolute truth that God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days. God had to rest on the 7th day. Some God, eh. 6 days of throwing together what would turn out to be a disaster and then he has to rest.

Since, to God, time is irrelevant, who came up with 6 and 1 day? (remember, these people are literalists. They believe every word in the Bible was inspired by God.)

Hey Europe, England, there are other ways of dealing with hedonism and materialism other than having to park your brains at the church door.

Speaking of your brains, use them!

I did, and found a way to deal with hedonism (I'm not hedonistic), materialism (I don't buy anything I don't need, I ride a scooter and am looking to get a Prius, for the highway, when I can afford to pay cash. I don't do plastic anymore, another way of killing materialism..

If you plan on living by the "literal word of God," good luck. It contradicts itself constantly. Make sure you are getting involved with the Church (community) that Christ inspired. He never intended to found a Church, as such. He was a Jew and remained a Jew. Watch how much they emphasize Paul, the one Apostle who never saw Jesus in the flesh, nor heard any of Jesus' teachings from him.

Neither the old testament nor the new testament was written until hundreds of years after the death of Jesus, so the people who wrote them not only didn't know Jesus, they didn't know his teaching style and when they tried to emulate it, made a big mess of it. About the only true teachings of Jesus can be found in the parables, and not all of them are reliable. The ones Jesus told are stories built on the Law of Three; there are usually three actors, who act in different ways, given the same situation. His parables are usually short, so they won't be easily forgettable, they are funny (if you understand his times) in order to be entertaining, and they have an important pattern; the law of three. (Oh, by the way, if you want to understand the whole created in 6 days days and rested on the 7th business, study the law of seven. 7 is the number of process in many religions, Judaism among them.)

Don't involve yourself in anything where you are expected to swallow everything someone says hook, line and sinker, literally, as the word of God, It's certainly not the only way to relate to the divine. You can go on a nature walk, by yourself, sit in a meadow or grove, quietly and just listen. You may hear the word of God...that small voice deep within. Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be answered unto you....

Study, don't just read the Bible. And not just the Bible. Jesus never read a word of the Bible, except what he read in ancient Jewish Scrolls that managed to slip into the Christan Old Testament. Good thing. He would have had a stroke before they had a chance to crucify him.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Independent Manfesto: We Won't stand For It Anymore.

just because we are independents doesn't mean we don't care about this country and care fiercely.

Just because we are independents, it doesn't mean that we don't vote (and in primaries where we are allowed to do so).

One of the major reasons we are independents is that we are fed up with corruption, electioneering, mudslinging and would not want to have a beer with any politician in D.C., let alone their slimy aides and consultants.

We don't like being embarrassed ever two-four years by the shenanigans either of the two main parties.

But now days, things are getting worse by the minute. We have lived under an illegitimate administration for over 7 years; one that has committed war crimes and crimes against the constitution that should land them in prison for life.

Now, we hear that the shenanigans are going to start during the Democratic primary. Well, they had sure as hell better not.

(Pertinent part of manifesto)

We will no longer recognize an illegitimate government, be it Democratic or Republican. Never Again! If it's illegitimate, it's not ours.

We cannot recognize people, as our leaders, who will say or do most anything for power. That includes congress-critters.

If we have to, we will organize to have both major parties outlawed as they are now and broken up into smaller parties. Let's face it, Republican nor Democrat means absolutely nothing anymore. They are both just big lies. To hell with big tents. It's time to define our positions and philosophies more clearly and honestly, and live in small glass houses where it is very dangerous to throw stones.

We will lobby for public funded elections. No one should own our elected officials. As Long as they do, we do not have a Democracy. What we have is taxation without representation, while huge American corporations move overseas and have all the representation they can buy and no taxation.


I don't know what it's going to come to, but I do know this. We are human beings with certain inalienable rights; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our government should help with those goals when they can and, when they can't, they should get the hell out of the way.

But as far as we are concerned, unless a government is legitimate, one elected by the people, of by and for the people, it should not be recognized or supported by the people. Let the corporations who bought them, continue to pay for them. Let those who are the most blessed by this twisted system pay for the defense of it, if there is any.


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

P.M., remember with whom we are dealing. Ain't gonna happen!

The Coming Demand for a Clinton Withdrawal

P.M. Carpenter

This morning the New York Times bellowed a headline on Obama's "Convincing Wins" yesterday. The Washington Post bannered the modifier, "Handily." The Chicago Tribune scribbled that he "Score[d] a Sweep" and the Politico, thinking ahead, remarked on Obama's "Landslides" -- which "Could Break Deadlock."

At the Virginia Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Obama surveyed his decisive victory: "We won in Louisiana, we won in Nebraska, we won in Washington state"; to put it another way, as he did, "We won North, we won South, we won in between."

Obama's campaign did it with strategic forethought (it anticipated the criticality of post-Super Tuesday caucuses), a powerful coalition, almost unprecedented political momentum, plenty of funds and a ready organization -- all of which will be needed in November, and all of which the Clinton campaign lacks -- as well as graciousness, it would seem, considering that Mrs. Clinton failed to even congratulate Obama in her own J-J speech. As my dear old mama would say: Tacky, tacky, tacky.

But the Clinton camp had a powerful piece of logic at the ready to explain away, to dismiss, Obama's geographically rolling victories: It expected him to win, you see, so the landslides don't really count. That was the feverish word transmitted from Clinton staff to television networks last night, and crack logicians everywhere will be working on that one for some time.

Besides, the Clinton camp argued, Obama outspent its candidate. So there. Double-doesn't count.

If that's the sort of cerebral shiftiness we're to expect in the general, should it come to that, please just wake me when it's over.

Me Too

As everyone knows by now, however, what it may come to instead is a battle for superdelegates -- and not any fussy democratic vote within the Democratic Party. Again, Obama's logic is the stronger: "If we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates from the most voters in the country ... it would be problematic" -- now there's a world-class understatement -- "for the political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters."

Especially if most of them are DLCers

Yet it would not be unthinkable, for Clinton has already thunk the thought, as she did again yesterday aloud, that "superdelegates ... should make an independent decision based on who they thought would be the strongest candidate and president."

In other words, superdelegates -- party hacks and bosses -- should decide for you. After which, presumably, they'll change the Democratic Party's name to that of the Oligarchic.

They will have to come up with two names because there will be no Democratic Party. The first time I heard the word "Superdelegates" in this campaign my heart sunk. Is this nomination going to be a rigged as the last two elections? If so, both parties should be outlawed in order to help restore Democracy. If we cannot find a way of getting the oligarchs out of Washington in the voting booth, we will just have to start being very creative.

There is, of course, a much better idea, one that averts all that hand-wringing angst stemming from democracy-denial and name-changing. Though it's far from unthinkable, it has nonetheless remained unspoken. But no longer: Should Hillary fail to rack up 68-percent victories in Ohio and Texas early next month, as Obama just did in Nebraska and Washington, she should gracefully withdraw from the race.

Yeah, when pig fly!

You will, I think, be hearing a lot more of that sentiment in the near future, and not only from self-interested Obama supporters. You will begin to hear it, rather, from the party's vast mainstream, which, already being happy with either candidate, will conclude, simply: Let's get on with it -- we can afford a party-splitting contest no longer; certainly not through spring and summer, and certainly not one decided by a superdelegate T.K.O.

The demanded justifications behind a Clinton withdrawal would be nearly overwhelming. In the general Obama will at any rate win the Democratic states of New York, California, etc., that Clinton has bragged about; Obama decisively outpaces Clinton in a head-to-head matchup with McCain; Obama does, in fact, do well among women, having beaten Clinton on that score 35 to 30 percent in Iowa, and 49 to 48 in Missouri; Obama has none of Clinton's scandal baggage to carry into the general; Obama has consistently proven himself a better fundraiser than Clinton; Obama can far more easily carry swing states than Clinton can; Obama would be more than competitive with McCain in the independent vote, unlike Clinton; Obama undeniably has the Big Mo; and above all, Obama did not support George W. Bush's idiotic war, while Clinton will be forced to defend her idiotic counter-decision every bloody minute on the general campaign trail, and which, undoubtedly, will cost her more than a few progressive votes.

Feel free to to add to this list, which could extend for miles. In fact, it extends all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

If for some magical reason, the word"Clinton" is not mentioned again between now and the conventions, everyone would breathe such a sigh of relief, meteorologists all over the world would wonder what the hell had happened. Rover and company would be highly disappointed as would most rethug insiders.

Wonder what she'll say when asked, "whose Bill dating these days?" (I couldn't care less, but many do, for reasons I'll never understand)

We all know the Goopers have more illegal crap on her donors by now. Stands to reason. Why did Rove quit the W.H. just as primary season was heating up. (No one cares about Cheney's connection to Halliburton nor Marvin Bushes involvement with the security firm who were protecting Logan at Boston on 9/11, but if Hillary's donors haven't paid a few traffic tickets, the flag will surely fall.)

She'll be asked about her husbands business dealings, Why not.? If this guy has business dealings with shady characters, the American people should know. Geraldine Ferraro was asked, as she ran for VP in 1984. Unfortunately, he had been up to no good, it seems.

Those arguments are coming, they're coming in droves, and they're coming around the corner. So pucker up, Mrs. Clinton -- and then you had best come up with better counterarguments than ones like, Well, his landslides don't count when they're expected.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Dem. Meltdown?

Maybe I'm the only voter in America who loves nastiness in every election year, but I really do hate it and would vow to vote for anyone who said they were not going to be nasty, little mudslingers, especially within their own party, and kept that promise, unless, of course, another candidate said something so hideous that it had to be answered. Still, it doesn't have to be answered in-kind.

We have been watching what we call the American cold-civil war for a long time. Maybe the Dems are gonna heat it up faster than we thought.

This might be interesting, if so much didn't depend on it.

Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

By FRANK RICH

WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as “the largest, most interactive town hall in political history” on national television, and no one noticed?

The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.

The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored “Voices Across America: A National Town Hall.” The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news. Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out.

But I’m glad I watched every minute, right up until Mrs. Clinton was abruptly cut off in midsentence so Hallmark could resume its previously scheduled programming (a movie promising “A Season for Miracles,” aptly enough). However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

For a campaign that began with tightly monitored Web “chats” and then planted questions at its earlier town-hall meetings, a Bush-style pseudo-event like the Hallmark special is nothing new, of course. What’s remarkable is that instead of learning from these mistakes, Mrs. Clinton’s handlers keep doubling down.

Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

The Hallmark show, enacted on an anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992, was equally desperate. If the point was to generate donations or excitement, the effect was the reverse. A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to “who knows how many” Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the “Yes We Can” Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)

Two days after her town-hall extravaganza, Mrs. Clinton revealed the $5 million loan she had made to her own campaign to survive a month in which the Obama operation had raised $32 million to her $13.5 million. That poignant confession led to a spike in contributions that Mr. Obama also topped. Though Tuesday was largely a draw in popular votes and delegates, every other indicator, from the candidates’ real and virtual crowds to hard cash, points to a steadily widening Obama-Clinton gap. The Clinton campaign might be an imploding Potemkin village itself were it not for the fungible profits from Bill Clinton’s murky post-presidency business deals. (The Clintons, unlike Mr. Obama, have not released their income-tax returns.)

The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting’s nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton’s top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons’ own recent misadventures in racial politics.

The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), “the black candidate” (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).

The result? Black America has largely deserted the Clintons. In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.

That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday’s voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.

But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have “not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was “making a historical statement.”

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

If that was the intent, it didn’t work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

Are the Dem-bulbs going to give the rethugs another 4 years of mental instability in the W.H. so they can blow themselves to smithereens? Do they know that they do this at all our peril?

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Clinton Associates Obama With McCain!

Does anyone else out there in cyberspace see any reason for this? To associate Obama with McCain is like associating a toad frog with a platypus. There just ain't no there, there.

Clinton, meanwhile, didn’t congratulate Obama in her speech to the Richmond gathering earlier in the evening. Instead, she continued to draw sharp contrasts with her rival, and associated him with the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.