American Politik is a blog of hard hitting, no holds barred thoughts from Rob Poole. Rob has been politically involved as a volunteer on campaigns for Al Gore, John Kerry, Russ Feingold and many more.
The purpose of this blog is to dissect the spin and cut through the media propaganda that seems to cloud the issues these days. Rob's fiery, cut to the truth style can get straight to the heart of the issue and does not discriminate from criticizing even those on his side of the political spectrum.
I honestly have always tried to be an alarmist about this election. I think it was my normal reaction to being an optimist the last two times and to have the excruciating experience of having both of those campaigns, campaigns for which I worked hard for, stolen away.
I don't think it's necessarily a horrible thing to play Chicken Little when the Republicans are so willing to lie, cheat and steal as necessary to retain power. It is fact that most of the electronic voting machines have strong Republican ties. It is also fact that the Corporate Media also has such ties and have been defensive of even the most horrendous Bush policies since 2001.
That being said, this time around our eyes should be open and the tinfoil hats should be ready to wear because there are going to be instances in which it will not be "conspiracy theory" to suggest off the wall insanely illegal strategies or plans that the Republicans might use.
As the movie Recount showed, Republicans just play to win, plain and simple. They have no level of ethics to stand up to. Whatever it takes.
As Democrats we have always held ourselves to a higher standard and in the past eight years, aside from the 2006 midterms that kind of thinking hurt us.
This time around I expect no less than the smearing Kerry received. They'll use every Hillary talking point against Obama (they already are by posting this video on Youtube)... dragging race, inexperience, his church into the fray and not caring one bit about it.
With that being said I happened to attend the Obama Primary Watching Party last night in Cudahy. It was without a doubt a historic night.
Historic for two reasons. One for the first time in my lifetime we have an African American General Election Nominee from one of the major parties.
WTMJ Channel 4 in Milwaukee asked me about that and I gave them this quote:
“It was something I wasn’t sure we were going to achieve in my lifetime and it’s kind of sad that we had that feeling," said Robert Poole. "But today kind of alleviates a lot of those fears.”
If you click the video button on that link above and skip past the parts of Obama and Clinton's speeches you'll see me saying that on there as well.
The other reason this is historic is that it marks the end of the DLC.
Al From's Democratic Leadership Committee as lamented and commented on here before, is the Corporate Wing of the Democratic Party. They have leaned far away from social programs in favor of Corporate Welfare. They push candidates that are considered "centrist" but mostly they just want candidates that are easy to control. They've been running candidates out there that are practically indistinguishable from our Republican opponents and in turn it helped in shifting the political spectrum to the Right. With Democrats leaning so heavily on Pro-Corporate, Pro-Republican values, the Republican party had to lean to the Right to differentiate themselves. Lucky for them Dick Cheney was around to make that transition easy.
The problem is that aside from giving away the Democratic identity of being a party for the people while Republicans were the party of the rich and corporate elite, this ran candidates unwilling to show any spine and stop corruption in Congress. It made Democrats enablers to Bush's multiple Constitutional Crimes and most certain War Crimes.
And it lost elections... lost them big.
The Clintons were at the forefront of the groups creation, the standard bearers for what the DLC wanted the party to look like. It was many of the Clinton's campaign staff and White House advisors that formed leadership in the group and provided direction for it's candidates.
They were the epitome of DLC. And now they've lost their last chance at the White House. Hillary might not be willing to concede or accept it at this point but that is reality.
So the cancer of the Democratic Party has now had it's standard bearer be defeated and a new breed of Democrat who once again wants the party to stand up for the poor and middle class and who wants to change the culture in Washington has stood up and pushed the DLC over the proverbial cliff. I wonder how they will take it.
Onto the General Election and onto John McCain. Believe me, it's about time because that guy has had a free pass for way too long.
We all know Florida and Michigan broke the rules when they tried to jump ahead. We also all know that Hillary and Obama knew that neither primary would count when they signed the pledge not to campaign.
So you had to know that in either case the best the DNC would do is reduce delegates or negate the results of those primaries in some way, months ago. This is not new news.
Both campaigns expected as much when they signed that pledge.
The problem is when Hillary's coronation was disrupted and it was clear they were going to lose this election her campaign went back on that pledge and decided to pull out the kitchen sink/scorched earth tactics.
They played up the Rev. Wright issue in the media and kept it going for two months. She hinted that Obama was a "muslim" with the off handed "as far as I know" comment. She hinted at McCain being better qualified to be President than Obama. And her campaign played the race card heavy and often with Pennylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky by openly courting White voters and presenting themselves as the safe white choice.
All of that certainly damaged Obama no doubt and all of it will continue to be exploited by the Republicans who have none of the scruples we once thought Democrats to have (once again, thanks Hillary).
But with her constant complaining and creating controversy where there was little to be had about two states, states that were already not gimmies for the Democratic Nominee in the Fall as it is, she played the worst possible card.
Her campaign knew going in that neither primary would or should really count. She clung to them out of desperation.
And even though the RNC halved the delegations for both states, nobody really knows about it nor cares.
After all the Republicans never went on TV railing against Democrats or their National Committee in saying Democrats don't want to count your votes.
Essentially she threw the entire Democratic Party under the bus in those states. The perception she created makes it appear that the Democrats don't care about voters from those states.
The Republicans had equally damaging penalties for these states but Hillary making a case against Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole has made it seem that the Democrats are the party who doesn't care about Florida or Michigan.
I admit getting Florida was a long shot but Michigan was a winnable swing state that now will be much harder for us to win.
And why? Because Hillary's loyalty is to herself and not to her party.
Hillary's campaign came into these meetings, knowing that she signed a non-compete pledge and that Democrats were aware that neither primary was legitimate and they still came in with the unreal expectation of full delegate seating based on those disqualified primary results. Results, that included a state where Obama and Edwards were not even on the ballot. Results where Obama could not come to the state and campaign against her name recognition and in every state thusfar he has either whittled down her support or overtaken her in primaries where they both spent time in a state.
They would not accept any less and I honestly don't think she cared how it turned out. Delegate-wise their best hopes would not have put them over the top and they knew it. Their best shot was to keep popular vote numbers (most especially problematic in Michigan where she had her name on the ballot and Obama did not) so she could take it to the Convention and argue a popular vote victory.
This was all angling and posturing for the fight they knew they were going to make in Denver.
No result today would have changed their intentions. This is not about Michigan or Florida's voting rights. This is and has always been about Hillary Clinton.
So she'll head to Denver and begin a party war on the floor. She'll have all of her big money donors call and threaten to rescind campaign financial support to Superdelegates who run in State races or House races and unlike a National Presidential candidate do not have the visibility or power to inspire thousands of $20-50 donations from constituents... certainly not enough to compete with the big Republican donor rolls.
These superdelegates will face their own political mortality if they lose donors to their campaigns and possibly see these fatcats work against them for a primary opponent who will support who they want next time out or even a Republican who have proven easier to control by their financial backers.
It will be the dirtiest game ever.
And Democrats will look sleazy, to millions of viewers nationally who are sick of the culture of corruption in Washington and will have a hard time understanding how any Democrat would be a change when it appears to run so rampant in their own party.
Fatcats and lobbyists calling the shots for their old pals the Clintons.
And in the end we'll limp along severely damaged because Hillary can't just quit and go away. Doing what is best for her party isn't in her bloodstream it appears.
The convention will turn off millions of voters.
The cries of "Democrats don't care about your votes" will turn Michigan and Florida voters away from our party in November.
It's not all gloom and doom. We have the one candidate that can shine hope onto any situation. But she has continually attempted tie both hands and a leg behind his back in November.
It's not the Democratic Party that doesn't care about Michigan and Florida voters... it's Hillary Clinton.
Because if she really cared about them, she would have stopped turning them away from the party and bowed out in a way that would help our nominee win this November. Without that, none of those Michigan or Florida voters will have a chance this next four years.
Because four more years of Bush policy is enough to ruin us all.
I know West Virginia is over so we should get over it. Honestly I thought Obama would lose by 25-30 points anyway so I carried no illusions as to how the end result of the contest would go.
What bothered me was the level of racism and ignorance these people carried. A lot of this is Hillary's fault. She has purposely had her team running the Republican racist playbook and now there are large misconceptions that Obama is a Muslim or that it is in a White person's interest to vote white. Hell even a ton of mis-spelled "Hussein" signs made it out.
In the year 2008 you should be openly shamed and looked down upon for racist views. However Clinton's supporters felt no such shame and had no problem saying they would never vote for a Black man to TV crews. You've seen the one I posted earlier but this one is FAR more disturbing.
What's worse is that by playing this card the Clintons have once again deliberately sabotaged the Democratic Nominee's chances in November. Whites told exit pollsters and the media that if Obama was the nominee they would vote against their own interests just because McCain was White.
Racially motivated voting ran somewhat higher than elsewhere: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. Just 31 percent of those voters said they'd support Obama against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where the question's been asked.
Indeed, as noted, among all West Virginia primary voters, only 49 percent said they would support Obama vs. McCain, far fewer than elsewhere and one of many signs of antipathy toward Obama in the state.
It drives me nuts that White people could sit back and say "we need someone that represents us" as if we have never had ANY Whites in charge ever.
I mean who were these fucking guys?
In a way this makes me wish Bill Richardson were the VP. Obama also has problems with Latino voters (for similar reasons actually) and Richardson puts a lot of Southern states like New Mexico and Arizona a bit more in play.
It's disheartening to know that next week Hillary's racism machine will ramp up one more time to draw out the worst of the worst in Kentucky. We'll be having this nauseating discussion again and people knowing that the media is airing all of their comments without the critical eye they should have on this topic, will be further emboldened to show all the forms of racism on TV they can.
It's like Martin Luther King Jr. never lived and the Civil War never happened. All that we need these people to do now to show how disgusting some Americans are is don their KKK robes and burn crosses on Obama's front lawn.
It is a disgrace to modern day America that were are the most hateful, ignorant country in the world.
Amy Poehler's spoof this past Saturday on SNL caught a lot of heat from Hillary supporters. In it Poehler who has played Hillary this campaign season declared herself a sore loser, said her supporters were racist and that she had no ethical standards.
It seemed to be the racist comment that really got stuck in the heads of the Hillary Supporters as the most offensive line. The problem is that her campaign has basically been running on desperation so long now that they might as well have put "VOTE WHITE" on her campaign signs.
Don't believe me?
Look at how the xenophobia ramps up when her supporters use Republican tactics to label him a "muslim" by tossing his middle name in there. Hillary basically perpetuated that myth with the infamous, "as far as I know" line which everyone knew to be bullshit.
That once again is a reminder of the third tenet of Poehler's satire, that Hillary has no ethical standards and will say anything to get elected.
Mathematically she has no chance. At this point she's just adding to the campaign debt she hopes the Obama campaign will pay off for her and she's only running out of spite to hurt Obama and further her chances for a 2012 bid. Although if Obama loses I am fairly certain that the spin Clinton wants, "he wasn't strong enough to beat McCain" will not trump the spin that "Obama was weakened because of how Hillary played dirty". Democrats will renounce her next bid well before Iowa, if she even gets that far.
There is only one place Hillary is winning, in her own head (oh and on that insane delusional fantasy site hillaryis44.org).
Want more proof that her VOTE WHITE campaign is working? Watch this news clip from West Virginia.
"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say," Clinton said. "And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. She thinks you've got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem."
They try to pretend that because they are white that somehow makes them the every-man. They play down to people and try to do what Bush and Rove did which was to lie and act like you were a simpleton who can relate to them on their level and have a beer with them. Instead of telling them the truth... the truth being that instead of giving a fuck about someone having a beer with you, you need to have a leader who is smarter than you and as smart as can be to understand more of the world than you or your friends do.
You need to have a President who can figure things out like our economy and gas prices and the environment and yes how to bring our troops home safely. You need a smart president who can get us the health care we need and who can make peace with our neighbors and for Christ's sakes can read and understand intelligence briefings to protect us from attacks.
We need to look rural, country, uneducated, yes White voters in the eye and say... look, I care about you but I care about all of us and we need to have someone who is incredibly intelligent in there to fix things. A common guy just can't do it with how bad Bush has fucked up.
Nobody wants to do that because it implies that a certain part of the electorate are dumb. But it can be done in a way that is not as harsh and spells it out. Do we want four more years of disasterous gut instincts and same wrong headed decisions or do we want four years of turning this thing around?
Vote with your head not your gut.
Oh and stop being fucking racist. It's the 21st century damn it! If Adams and Jefferson had had their way slaves would have been given freedom in the Declaration of Independence. If they can figure it out in 1776 then some Americans are really too slow for words.
If we vote this November and Obama loses because he is black, than we should be shamed by every other country in the world as a complete and utter embarrassment and unworthy of the liberty our forefathers wrote of and fought for. Since we ourselves have no idea what the meaning of the word is if we're still so fucking ignorant as to vote for someone not based on their positions and principles but rather the color of their skin.
Shame on any person who votes based on skin color. May you get the misery you deserve from your vote.
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I did have a couple of unpublished posts sitting on here that I released today but nothing incredibly substantive.
A couple of interesting things.
1. Clinton basically for all intensive purposes lost the nomination this week. 2. She refuses to leave the election. 3. Obama's mere presence creates World Peace.
LAGOS (Reuters) - Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria's oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
"The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem," the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.
Back to those first two... here's some fun poked at Hillary's expense... like our parting shots at her and her negative campaign.
Hillary who was dubbed "The Goddess of Peace" by some of her more fervant (and insane) supporters a few weeks back on Democratic Underground, decided today to show once again how a Goddess of Peace promotes, well, peace.
Although she voted for the Iraq War and voted for the Kyl/Lieberman amendment that basically threatened to go to war with Iran, she stepped it up a notch by showing that while those other two 'peaceful' solutions were great there's only one real way to promote peace... NUCLEAR WAR!
Why of course! If you nuke people off the face of the planet they will no longer fight! Brilliant!
Clinton says U.S. could "totally obliterate" Iran Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:43pm EDT
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.
On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel)," Clinton said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she said.
Man I can't wait to see what she wants to do with North Korea!
Today must have been a day to look at what you would do if you won the Presidency since everybody rolled out their ideas. As per the usual in this campaign Obama came out with the one really good idea while his opponents pandered in ridiculous fashion (especially McCain).
I can see Obama and McCain coming out with these ideas, after all they're going to be their party's nominees barring serious cheating and backroom dealing by Hillary. Of course we now know that Hillary's a bit of a drinker so maybe she was on the sauce when she decided she could still win and released her 100 days idea. Okay I kid, I kid... that was low.
That's right they are all criminals and they all need to be prosecuted. For War Crimes. For breaking domestic laws and for what they have done to our Constitution. They have admitted they committed federal crimes by breaking the FISA laws and by committing torture... what more do we need?
I think it's hilarious that Republicans who afraid like hell that they could be prosecuted for what they have done have used and gotten the media to use the talking point that "that is all in the past" and that they are "looking to the future" or better yet that they are "forward thinkers".
Under the guise of that logic I can take a gun, shoot you dead and in 5 minutes say, "that was in the past, we will look to the future now and do things right from here".
They have been all over the place spouting that shit about Iraq. And for years that strategy has worked. By not acknowledging how their policies or crimes affected the past we have been doomed to repeat them in the future.
A good chunk of those involved with the Iran Contra Affair were pardoned or let off the hook by Republican Appointed Judges and now they work for this Bush Administration, committing new war crimes and continuing to inflame an entire region against us for decades to come just as they did throughout the 1980s.
If anything this is proof that the past DOES affect the future and for the sake of preserving any shred of value of the most important document in the history of our nation, the Constitution and in the face of saving our world standing and credibility to other countries we need to prove that we are what we claim to stand for and go after these violations of democracy, peace, freedom and justice.
How dare we challenge anyone else on such questions if we cannot take responsibility for our own actions and jail those who broke our own laws?
But since everyone is in the "If I Were President..." mood, I figure I have as much of a chance as Hillary does to win so I will issue a list of my first actions as our nation's leader.
1. Fire the entire Justice Dept. and replace them with defenders of the Bill of Rights and Constitution.
2. Repeal all Presidential Pardons imposed on any member of the current Administration and prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales, et al for their war crimes, breaking of the laws of the Geneva Convention and breaking of FISA laws.
3. Cut Pentagon Spending to a third of what it is currently. Eliminate funded projects like a missile defense system or a "gay bomb". Eliminate funding for cold war projects. Keep all Military spending for troop bases and increasing troop levels. Increase military pay and benefits (especially health care). Make sure our troops have proper body and humvee armor.
4. End the Iraq War immediately. Withdraw all troops within 6 months in 20,000 troop intervals. Give all returning troops a 6 month rest at home. Withdraw all contractors immediately and remove any legal immunity they might have had under the provisional authority if Iraq's government hasn't already. Re-allocate all National Guard Members to their local posts on their normal on-call basis. Take about 50,000-80,000 active duty personnel after their 6 month rest has ended and send them to Afghanistan to stabilize the country temporarily and hunt for Bin Laden.
5. End all Financial Aid to countries that aid terrorists (Pakistan & Saudi Arabia I am looking at you).
6. Nominate Jonathan Turley as the new A.G. to prosecute Bushco and defend our constitution.
7. Repeal NAFTA and all Free Trade Agreements. Sit down and renegotiate country by country making certain to include minimum environmental, health & safety and wage requirements from workers of those countries.
8. Repeal tax benefits for corporations which have shifted over 10% of their workforce overseas.
9. Eliminate Bush Tax Cuts for top 1%, maintain cuts aimed at middle class. Eliminate offshore tax shelter loopholes.
10. Push for a law that limits a CEO's pay to a proportionate amount of a shareholder's earnings and average employee salaries at that company. (Do it under the guise of protecting the market and the shareholders which would be true and have more traction than defending the average worker in this country for some reason)
11. Institute a strong pro-regulation FCC that forces media monopolies like News Corp and Clear Channel to break apart. Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
12. Offer a Universal Healthcare plan that eliminates HMOs entirely. Through the government, similar to a social security tax, offer healthcare that covers everybody similar in ways that England and Canada does it.
13. Remove the Social Security cap. This will eliminate all funding shortfalls and stabilize it for all generations in the future.
14. Institute a carbon tax and reinstate requirements for smokestack filters, superfund cleanups and increase automobile emissions requirements similar to what California has tried to pass.
15. Require all automakers to reach 50 MPG by 2015 or face suspension of operations.
16. Ban Ethanol as a source of fuel. Work on an energy policy that offers large benefits to utilities to buy large plots of unused land in the Southwest and put up huge solar farms that could power the entire country at a fraction of current cost. Switching to solar electric power with Wind farms as backup sources could then provide the opportunity for automakers to work on a full switch to electric cars where owners can just plug in and recharge overnight or while they are parked.
17. Eliminate any attempts to drill in ANWR and push through Polar Bear protection acts.
18. Buy up loose Nukes in the Ukraine and sign a treaty with Russia, China, Pakistan, India and all nuclear weapon bearing countries to eliminate nuclear weapons stockpile to 10% of current amount by 2012.
19. Enter into new Kyoto Treaty that includes all developing nations across the world and creates a clear mandate for our own country as well as heavy polluters such as China to do our part to save our planet.
20. Release all "classified" information still remaining pertaining to the Assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, MLK and everything pertaining to 9/11. This may release all sorts of new information and may even incriminate some that are still alive but it's time to stop lying to or deceiving the American people on what the truth of these matters is.
21. Push for passage of a law that makes all campaign financing public. Each candidate that declares will be given a certain amount of money similar to a salary cap that they can spend during their primaries and then during the Presidential race. The FEC will keep strict tabs on usage of the money and any left over will be returned to the FEC fund. No candidate can inject their own money into a campaign. 527s would be barred from media advertising (although they can organize grass roots campaigns).
For a candidate to receive funding for House or Senate campaigns they need to reach a certain number of signatures to be allowed on the ballot and receive the funding. For National Presidential Candidates they must receive the pre-requisite number in all 50 states. The media must offer heavy discounts on ad time to allow for fair exposure for all candidates and cannot reject a candidate's ad (yes even Fox News has to air Democratic Candidate Ads). News shows cannot re-air the full version of any candidate's ad as to not give free runs of that candidates' media and thus circumvent the financing rules. Any newscast or station that does this will be heavily fined.
22. Offer College Scholarships to every American Student that finishes school and then volunteers to work two years in the private sector in urban areas that need them the most.
23. Reduce or eliminate wasteful Government Grants that do not benefit small business owners or poor/middle class Americans.
24. Increase the focus on Science in our country. Load the EPA and NASA with Administrators that believe in science over pandering to their bosses. Push the EPA to regulate very heavily on companies that abuse the public's trust and damage our environment. Make a renewed commitment to space exploration including renewing the Hubble Telescope project.
25. Illegalize ARM loans and force all mortgage companies to work off of FIXED loans in the future. Open up bankruptcy laws to protect homeowners who are nearing the end of the foreclosure process a way to not be crushed by the credit hit forever. For those just entering the foreclosure phase force mortgage lenders to change all loans to a reasonable fixed rate within a certain percentage of the Fed's Interest Rate and do a Government Assumption on the debt that would be owed to other countries because of such a move.
26. Legalize Marijuana and sell licenses to companies to produce and sell the product. Treat it the same way as alcohol with age limits, public inebriation laws and driving laws (if suspected a blood test should be required to eliminate fines). Also make the use of THC as a chemical illegal and make it illegal to use home grown or "loose" marijuana. By regulating it you can tax it in a way that helps pay for programs that help people (ie health care) and you stop the flow of dangerous laced chemicals from outside the country.
Tobacco companies can enter in the bidding and possibly begin to halt the production of some nicotine bearing products with marijuana products replacing them as profitable cash cows.
I would also mandate that all states and federal prisons should release anybody charged with marijuana possession crimes and anybody who has had these charges on them should be given a process to have these charges retroactively expunged from their records. Marijuana distribution charges will be debated since future distribution by regular citizens will still be disallowed.
27. I would mandate an end to "public voucher" programs and heavily increase government financing to repair schools in disrepair, fund programs such as music and art, and eliminate NCLB rules that teach kids to pass a test, not to learn effectively.
28. I would increase Government contributions to NPR and mainly PBS so that they can continue to provide educational programming without the corporate spin of their corporate-owned counterparts.
29. I would illegalize private companies from producing voting machine equipment and have a nonpartisan government oversight group to make sure that we're incorporating a machine that allows for paper receipts to validate vote totals and to make sure every voter has a record of how their vote was recorded personally.
30. I would eliminate the Government's No Fly List since it seems to be full of random names and political enemies and does no good at all.
31. I would set a law that forced all lawmakers to DIVEST from any stock or dividend holdings before taking office. I would also bar all lobbyist gifts PERIOD. Congressmen and Women should be paying for their own flights, meals and trips without a corporate sponsor. Between this and public campaign financing this takes a lot of the unfair corporate influence out of Washington.
32. I would ban any government outsourcing of government jobs. This is OUR government isn't it? Why are people from other countries doing our jobs?
33. I would create a Public Works program that would employee engineers through the college scholarship program and a mix of workers with lots of construction experience as well as little to no experience to rebuild roads, bridges and public utility infrastructure. Putting people to work for America and building resumes, experience and bank accounts in the process.
34. I would eliminate the DHS and other security agencies and merge the CIA and NSA into one operation run by non-partisan civilian leadership. I would order a cease and desist on spying on American phone calls outside the accordance of FISA law.
35. Illegal Immigration - I would give those already here a path to citizenship by putting them on Work Visas and requiring them to take citizenship courses. I would require part of those citizenship courses to require ESL classes to teach them English so they can better acclimate to society. I would increase fines and put in serious enforcement mechanisms to prevent large corporations from hiring these workers. One of the largest reasons that they come is the lure of corporations unwilling to pay American workers the minimum wage.
I do think that social services should only be offered for legal immigrants or those on a work visa. By increasing the amount of those with a work visa, more people are covered but by coming here illegally you are skipping your turn and your right to certain benefits that American taxpayers pay for. Under the Visas the immigrants are paying taxes so they deserve benefits. We should only cover emergency situations and if there are illegal immigrants that report to hospitals they need to be treated and then handed over to the INS where they would be deported. If they have family legally here in America they can be given a special spot in line for citizenship. I know this is a hard subject but we have to be fair. For those people that waited in line and became legal citizens they had to go through a tough process to become Americans and it's not fair to them nor regular citizens to see all of their tax dollars going to supplementing social programs aimed more towards helping illegal immigrants than regular Americans these days (especially when you consider how stretched thin state budgets are right now). You also want to be fair and civil with people that want so badly to be a part of our country that they would risk imprisonment to do so.
36. I would legalize Gay Marriage. Or at least attempt to by putting forth a bill that proves its legality due to the Equal Protection Clause. There's no reason nor room for discrimination towards Gay people. Homosexual xenophobia is no different than any other civil rights struggle of our time and we must meet the challenge the same way as with others, by relenting and giving equal rights to those who have been oppressed.
I'm sure there is more (and I'll add to this later I am sure), but of course I would never be allowed to be President. I would be killed (See: Bobby Kennedy) or marginalized (see: Dennis Kucinich).
The corporate media and the military industrial complex would never allow for such a budget or such Theodore Roosevelt-like Corporation reigning in to transpire.
But we can all dream of a future where this were all in play and the country would be on a more equal footing for all of its' citizens once again, can't we? Or have 30 years of Reagan-Clinton-Bushes ruined America forever?
Barack Obama seems to get in all sorts of trouble when he treats American voters like grown ups and speaks to them with respect and tells the truth. Apparently after at least 30 years of being patronized, coddled, pandered to and hell outright lied to, some Americans don't know how to act when a Politician doesn't put some rosy spin on every subject.
So here were the comments from Obama that drew all this faux controversy:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing has replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Immediately morons everywhere were saying that he was "acting like an elitist" or "out of touch with the middle class" or they clung to the idea that he was insulting people for their faith or for their belief in the Second Amendment. It was pretty sickening just how ridiculous this got.
Inartful. That is the only fair criticism of this analysis. Let's ask the voters in Pennsylvania these questions. If the 'distracting' issues of guns, gay marriage and abortion were all resolved to their liking, would their economic lives change? How about immigration? If all illegal aliens were to disappear, would those rust belt jobs return? For so many years, such issues have been used to corral blue collar workers into a party and political philosophy that serves the elites in this country. When someone speaks the truth and acknowledges that this sector of our society has been royally deceived, that issues they rally around have little to do with their ultimate welfare, it is time to banish such a person from the campaign trail.
Nobody was worse about it than Hillary Clinton was. Her entire campaign at this point is all about lobbing desperate hail marys out there hoping and praying for something to sink Obama with Superdelegates.
She tried to pander to Pennsylvania voters by claiming that she, the $100 million income candidate, somehow felt their pain more than Obama did. She went as far to accuse Obama of being so elitist that he would suffer the same fate as Gore and Kerry. Yes in one fell swoop she insulted two better Presidential Candidates than she could ever hope to be and two who won their elections but were cheated by the Clintons' new best friend, Karl Rove and his voting machine and political connections.
I forget now wasn't it Obama who used his law degree to work for poor people while Hillary used hers to defend Sam Walton's Wal-Mart empire?
Seems to me he would know more about what poor and middle class people are going through. Just because she worked for Wal-Mart doesn't mean she was the $6 an hour cashier or exit greeter.
Maybe that will wake her up for the crap she is pulling (I'm not holding my breath).
But what about the voters that are showing outrage over this?
Every single person who claims to be "offended" by the bitter remarks has taken what he has said and twisted the context around totally. They took it to mean that their (fanatical) love of God and Guns was under attack.
In reality he was pointing out how Republicans use those tools to sucker these people into voting against their economic wellbeing.
Bush and the Rubber Stampers had Congress and the Judiciary for 6 years. Did they try to end Abortion? Nope. How about that Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment? Nope, didn't go anywhere. What about a serious relaxation of gun ownership laws? Well people might recall the Bush was actually in favor of retaining the laws put in place under the Clinton Administration.
Republicans blew smoke up every one's asses to divide them and make them think these were the serious issues of the day. Then once in office they destroyed the economy. They gave contract after contract and giveaway after giveaway to corporations who shipped these people's jobs overseas. They spent more than any so-called "tax and spend" Democratic Congress ever has.
They deregulated everything and allowed predatory lending to go so rampant that now everyone is losing their houses and our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse into a Great Depression-like state.
People have a right to be bitter and Obama is right to say people are.
My personal opinion though is that the people that are angry that he would say that are idiots. They are likely the ones that STILL haven't awaken to see what their hero Bush has left them. If you are not bitter or angry about how our economy is in shambles, our military is overextended and exhausted, our constitution and civil liberties have been trampled and ignored, our world standing erased and our environment getting us near the brink of extinction thanks to the last 8 years.... then you are a fool of epic proportions and deserve to be deported to a country where your blind ignorance and ridiculous defense of it does less damage. We had 8 years of Bush because of a blind, ignorant electorate and I'll be damned if those people, the people who are offended now, have any further control in who runs our country... or as they would have it, who runs our country into the ground.
Obama spoke about this and absolutely owned Hillary on this issue. He leaves no question as to who represents who and speaks very truthfully and plainly about how valid her arguments are on this.
Hopefully those people that are outraged wake up or wise up. Their slumber or ignorance has damaged our country critically already.
In a matter of 24 hours the Clintons both made complete asses of themselves in Pennsylvania and Indiana. It's not hard when the basic premise of your campaign is a lie. After all a First Lady is not more experienced than someone who was in the State Senate and their actual Senate experience is close enough to be negligible at best.
Think of it this way, if Nancy Reagan or Laura Bush went from being first ladies and got into the Senate, served just over a single term and decided to run for President, would they be qualified? If you make the argument that Hillary was more involved in her husband's presidency than they were in theirs, why does her schedule as First Lady not indicate such? It seems she was given the Healthcare issue to handle and after she dropped the ball she presumed the role of a regular First Lady.
One thing she did do as First Lady though was support NAFTA. These free trade agreements have hurt America greatly in outsourcing good jobs, strengthening the economies of other countries (see the growth of China and India among others) and weakening our own economic stability.
Bush took the Clinton's theme of free trade and put it on steroids by expanding free trade to any place that would sign a pact. In the meanwhile millions of good paying factory and production jobs disappeared. However Bush kept artificially inflating the unemployment numbers by saying tons of jobs were created while refusing to indicate that most of these jobs were seasonal, through temp agencies, or just low end jobs. Workers who worked at a factory and made $20+ an hour were now working 2-3 jobs at $6-8 an hour. Of course that made it appear like three jobs were filled rather than one. And of course nobody counts the depressed who stop claiming unemployment or have stopped looking for work because of the weak market.
So when Mark Penn, Clinton's PR guy with a mostly Republican tied firm, decided to go and talk to Columbia about a free trade agreement... even though his candidate is losing and primed to lose the Democratic Nomination it of course caused a little uproar in Pennsylvania where they have been hit hard by such free trade agreements (well not too much uproar after all the Clintons convinced the media to become Obama attack dogs and they largely have been off the hook for some time).
He resigned from his position (although still receives the boatloads of money the idiot Clintons are paying him) but the scandal shouldn't go away so quickly. Sure, the Clintons would have you believe that this was independent of the campaign but of course as is the case with everything in her Rovian Campaign, dig a little and you get better answers...
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) – Hillary Clinton used her trademark laugh Thursday to deflect a question about the $800,000 her husband earned in 2005 giving speeches for a Bogota-based group that supports the Colombia free trade agreement — the same trade deal she currently opposes.
Asked by CNN if those earnings represented a conflict of interest given that she has dipped into her family's pocketbook to pay campaign bills, Clinton threw up her hands and laughed loudly for several seconds.
"How many angels dance on the head of the pin?," she responded, continuing to giggle. "I have really, uh, nothing to … I mean, how do you answer that?"
The New York senator explained there are different sides to the argument over trade, and re-emphasized her own opposition to the trade deal, assailing the Colombian government's "outrageous" record of "targeting labor leaders."
"I am against the Colombia free trade deal," she said. "It doesn't matter who talks to me. It doesn't matter any circumstances. I have been against it. I am against it. I will be against it absent the kind of changes in behavior that I have been calling for from the Colombian government."
Earlier in the press conference, describing her husband's advocacy for the trade deal, Clinton said: "Everyone is free to express their opinion."
I'll add this to provide more of that "Ready from Day One" leadership that means you're not ready to answer tough questions from day one:
So that brings us to the other Clinton gaffe of the day. Bill Clinton comes off as less and less Presidential now that he's campaigning so negatively for Hillary. The Bill we see these days is an angry, belligerent old man who is afraid that the status quo that he now embraces but once fought against, will lose out of his wife isn't in charge of it.
That's truly a shame.
In Bill's quest to regain power (at least for his wife) he has pretty much killed any credibility to his silly claim that he was the first "black president". After all a Black President wouldn't invoke Jesse Jackson as an insult to downplay a black candidate's chances.
And a black president wouldn't say this about a black candidate. GAFFE #2:
"Next, We'll See Him Run an Ad Saying: Vote For Me, I Don't Steal Cars."
Here's the video so you can see for youself:
Even if it was in response to an anti-oil company ad Obama ran it is in ridiculously poor taste.
Of course a black president would also be smart enough not to sign a Republican Welfare Reform Bill that attacked the poor for needing assistance at the same time as corporate welfare and corporate overseas tax shelters are okay.
But yet Bill Clinton had no problem with that either.
I guess he's a rich white old guy after all. And a foolish one at that.
I don't know what it is with these people but they are just boldfaced liars and spin so much that sometimes I think the Clinton house has to rest on a perpetual Merry-Go-Round just so that they never have to leave their comfort zone.
After the brouhaha over Bill Clinton's angry Bill Richardson comments in the meeting with California Superdelegates, Bill Richardson wrote an Op-Ed defending his decision and maintaining his respect for the Clintons.
Although this line managed to slip in there:
I, of course, called Sen. Clinton prior to my endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was a difficult and heated discussion, the details of which I will not share here.
That line made it clear that the Clintons were pretty angry with Bill Richardson for his decision. Although ABC News would later uncover that in the conversation Hillary asserted that Obama "cannot win".
Now I have no problem with candidates saying they have a better chance of defeating the opponent from the other party. I have no problem with them believing they are more qualified and even pointing out their qualifications in commercials and stump speeches. Barack Obama has said he feels he is the candidate that stands a better chance against John McCain.
That to me is fine. It's not disqualifying Hillary's chances altogether. It's just saying he thinks he would do better than her. And statistically that statement is possible even if Hillary beat McCain head to head that Obama might have polled higher. That doesn't mean he thinks she would lose to him or at least he would never openly admit that. And it doesn't mean he's campaigning in a way that says, "if you nominate Hillary, we will lose in November".
However that's exactly what she has basically been saying by trying to imply that Obama isn't "ready from day one", is unable to answer the hypothetical 3am call, is less qualified than John McCain.
To blatantly campaign in such a fashion only shows your indifference towards doing what is best for the party. Should she lose the nomination and chances are incredibly high that this will happen, she has declared that there is no way the Democrat will win and in repeating that meme before Obama is the candidate she is helping reinforce that notion to undecided voters for the General Election.
It's rather low and despicable at the very least.
But in typical Clinton fashion they lie and spin their way out of what they said and try to blame Richardson of all people. Just like how they tried to claim that the pro-war, pro-long term bases Hillary is somehow the "peace candidate" who will actually get us out of Iraq (as opposed to Obama, who has been against the war since day one, I guess), they have taken something they are clearly guilty on and tried to lie their way out of it by claiming the exact opposite of what happened.
It makes the already completely bogus "flip-flopper" John Kerry accusations from the last presidential campaign cycle look so unbelievably pale in comparison just by the level of deception and the speed and force of how these about-faces are done by her campaign.
Time's Mark Halperin reports on the account of one unnamed "Clinton associate" who says it was Richardson, not Clinton, who suggested that Obama could not win in the general election. Halperin quotes this Clinton associate as saying, "Bill Richardson is clearly embarrassed that he broke his promise to them. He should come out and tell the truth and admit that he told both Clintons that Obama wasn't ready and can't win."
It should be noted that Mark Halperin has been anti-Obama for some time and more notably anti-liberal.
To clarify here Bill Richardson had openly questioned Obama's "inexperience" while he was wavering between Clinton and Obama for the endorsement. But after he heard the "race speech", the wavering ended and he saw the leadership Obama could provide.
Since that point there is no question Richardson supported Obama outwardly by doing the public endorsement and publicly defending Obama from attacks. In politics you don't do those things publicly and then go to the other candidate and say he can't win. When you endorse in the fashion Richardson did, you tie your horse to that candidate's wagon. If they fail, you have damaged your own political career to some degree. Al Gore suffered a good amount of political damage when he endorsed Howard Dean and Dean subsequently lost all but his home state in the primaries. It took the success of "An Inconvenient Truth" to erase that from memory.
So to say that Richardson said otherwise after the endorsement is complete and utter lies.
Just to reiterate here's the context of what was said in the conversation between Richardson and Clinton according to the ABC News Report:
Sources with direct knowledge of the conversation between Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., prior to the Governor's endorsement of Obama say she told him flatly, "He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win."
Richardson, who served in President Clinton's cabinet, disagreed.
If he didn't disagree then he's completely stupid for possibly damaging his own political career by endorsing someone who he believes "cannot win". Of course the reality is that the Clintons, much like their Bush friends, have no connection to reality. That connection seems to have been severed at the very latest in the mid-1990s.
There used to be a time just recently actually, where you could look at what a complete disaster George W. Bush has been as President and then you'd look back at the Clinton years as the "good times".
Bill Clinton may have run down his reputation by beating Republicans in Presidential races and may have angered some Republican voters by cheating on his wife (not that most of the Republicans haven't been caught doing worse now) but the majority of America looked at Bill as the way more competent President and in fact some were wishing he still were considering how Dubya has flubbed things.
Then he starts to campaign for his wife and starts to show his angry side. There's something wholly unlikeable about a politician yelling at you and telling you that you are wrong if you don't show loyal lockstep. It's damaged his legacy pretty badly, as recent polls show.
It appears he blew his top again at a meeting with California Superdelegates when it came to defending longtime Clintonite and Democratic Party Traitor, James Carville over the indefensible comments he made about Bill Richardson for endorsing Barack Obama.
The Bill Clinton who met privately with California's superdelegates at last weekend's state convention was a far cry from the congenial former president who afterward publicly urged fellow Democrats to "chill out" over the race between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama.
In fact, before his speech Clinton had one of his famous meltdowns Sunday, blasting away at former presidential contender Bill Richardson for having endorsed Obama, the media and the entire nomination process.
"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.
According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.
But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.
It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.
"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.
The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.
"It was very, very intense," said one attendee. "Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns."
When he finally wound down, Bill was asked what message he wanted the delegates to take away from the meeting.
At that point, a much calmer Clinton outlined his message of party unity.
"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " one delegate told us.
"We couldn't help but think he was also talking to himself."
Yeah because questioning James Carville is beyond reproach, especially after the crap he has pulled since 2004. Like sabotaging the Kerry Campaign on election night in 2004, or slandering Howard Dean after his 50 state strategy from the DNC helped Democrats win the 2006 mid-terms in a landslide and win in places they never win in.
Of all the people to be calling someone a "Judas". Here's the guy who stabbed his own party in the back to help Bush win. We'd be talking about the re-election of a President Kerry and would likely not be talking about economic collapse, continued participation in Iraqi Civil Wars and would have taken actions to extend our children and grandchildren's futures by helping to take real actions to curb global warming.
But no, we got four more years of the most scandalous, crime ridden Presidency of all time. Thanks very much in part to James Carville.
Okay I just thought I'd throw a misogynistic term out there right away so all the people that want to slam me with sexist claims will stay away from the post from the get-go.
It's interesting to me to see how this feud is developing. Hillary Clinton runs a dirty campaign where she constantly attacks Barack Obama, who is certain to become the party's nominee for the Presidential general election. Knowing she can't win by the will of the people, her team scheme in every possible way to steal it. They play the racism card against him, say he's not as qualified as John McCain, go after his church and then Hillary goes completely batshit crazy and thinks she was an action hero star who dodged sniper fire in Bosnia and was the person who brought peace to Northern Ireland. No really, former leader of the DNC and DLC douchebag Terry McAuliffe actually said that:
But now the Clinton campaign is really pushing the blarney boat out. On March 4th, Terry McAuliffe, her campaign chairman, has gone the further that I can see. “We would not have peace today had it not for Hillary's hard work in Northern Ireland," he said on CNN on March 4th. Well, that’s certainly news to those who were there at the time.
Of course the Irish have something altogether to say about that lie.
Anyway all the while they were going the smear route (and here's a partial list of the attacks), they were dreaming of ways to steal this. Go after Super Delegates, challenge the legality of caucuses, declare Michigan and Florida's delegates should be seated even if Hillary signed a pledge not to campaign and no other candidate's names were on the ballot in Michigan. Hell they even went as far as to suggest that she was going to try to twist the arms of Pledged delegates in order to subvert the will of the voters.
Of course there was going to be public pressure on Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi to say something in this regard. Especially with Hillary both slamming Obama as worse than McCain AND begging to be on a ticket with Obama at the same time.
So she did and the Hillbots went nuts. Her rich corporate donors decided to try to blackmail Pelosi and the party if she stands in the way of the Superdelegates cheating for Hillary.
Basically they feel that if Pelosi stops the Superdelegates from stealing the election for Hillary that they will withdraw the support that they give to Democratic Candidates.
Upon closer inspection though, these twenty donors who signed this letter should give serious pause to any Democrat who actually wants change in this country. All this does is open up more questions of why the Clintons still refuse to release their tax returns and makes you wonder how much money from these donors has made it into their personal finances. And if it made it into their personal finances, then you can makes claims of illegal donations to the Clinton campaign since she used some of the wealth she's obtained to lend $5 million to her own campaign. After all, if she received money from these people and then funded herself with it that's a ridiculous loophole for one to use to cheat their way around campaign finance reform.
And look at the donors. 7 of them stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House when the Clintons were practically renting it to their corporate buddies. One of them got in serious trouble for selling missile secrets to China. This is a rather notorious list of people to be trying to strong arm our party.
The Democratic Party is supposed to be, at least my definition of it has always been, the party of the people. While it was no secret that the GOP only cared about rich people and corporate interests, the Democrats were supposed to be counter to that. The opposition party.
Allowing these donors to dictate anything is bad for the party and frankly, bad for America. We already have a party that caters to the rich and is willing to destroy the poor and middle class for their benefit.
In this fight I would almost certainly support Nancy Pelosi. Yes she has been a great disappointment. When she ran against former Tennessee Congressman and current head of the DLC Harold Ford for House Minority Leader after Dick Gephardt retired she was painted as the liberal San Franciscan Democrat who would bring the party to some sort of tree hugging hippie revival or something. When she won the election amongst Democratic members of the House there was a feeling of hope that she would be the strong liberal she was painted as. After all, nobody in the House looked very strong at that point and Republicans were playing every dirty trick in the book to get legislation on the floor before anyone could read it, deny Democrats meeting rooms and pretty much silence the Democratic voice completely.
Pelosi held her own but when it was clear in 2006 that public sentiment and backlash was so strong that she could see a Democratic tidal wave of new House members elected and she could become the Speaker of a huge majority, she decided to play the spineless centrist card we all feared. Before the 2006 mid-terms she declared that impeachment was off the table. I could somewhat understand that being said before the election.
After all there are 30% of the country that are completely lacking common sense or understanding of the world and they would come out in droves to save their leader from facing the crimes he committed. So keeping them at home made sense. But after they won there was no excuse. Bill Clinton committed perjury on a personal indiscretion. The House Republicans which spent $60 million of taxpayer money and could only come up with this weak charge, impeached him.
That was a minor offense. A misdemeanor at best. Bush has committed treasonous acts against his country. It's well documented that he broke FISA laws, used signing statements to break a majority of other laws that have been passed and then tried to cover his tracks by breaking yet another law and deleting all computer records of communications. We're not even addressing the obvious election theft that they should be prosecuted for.
For the future of our country and to send a statement to American citizens as well as children who are learning about the Constitution and how America works we should have impeached and prosecuted the entire bunch of criminals. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice... all of them.
The problem is the Senate is too closely divided to complete the conviction and removal from office. So Pelosi figured a failed impeachment would look bad and partisan to the American people.
The issue isn't whether or not that was true because that reasoning certainly isn't misguided it's that it fails to recognize how the media coverage of the impeachment and the trials which would be covered nationally, interrupting daily television programming so everyone could see, would prove without a doubt the crimes they committed and turn public sentiment for the conviction so strongly in favor of it that even the safest of DLC and Republican incumbents would have to consider their own necks versus saving Bush.
She never even gave that proposition a second thought and just kept impeachment off the table.
It's that sort of spinelessness that kills Democratic hopefuls before they ever get a chance to be elected and make an impact on Congress. It reinforces every bad stereotype of the party and does it in a way that the Right Wing talking heads and the mainstream media pundits alike can attack and have some credibility on. After all some credibility is way more than the zero they usually have.
So I'm usually inclined to think everything Pelosi says is garbage, but she's absolutely right here. The will of the people should trump the opinions of party insiders and rich donors.
"We can't allow the tension and pressures of a spirited Presidential contest to spill over and harm hard-working Democratic candidates running to strengthen our Democratic majority in the House," Pelosi wrote in an e-mail sent to a vast list of Democratic donors and supporters. "I will do whatever it takes to protect our candidates and make sure their campaigns to drive change forward don't skip a beat."
And Pelosi urged potential donors to make a contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before the March 31st deadline for the current fundraising quarter.
Her appeal comes two days after a group of 20 Clinton backers sent a letter to Pelosi chastising her public position that superdelegates should support the will of the people -- in other words, vote for the candidate with the most pledged delegates.
See that's the problem. Who does Pelosi urge you to send money to? The former Clinton Administration official turned Congressman Rahm Emanuel's DCCC.
The DCCC, run by Emanuel and the DSCC run by the other New York Senator Chuck Schumer are breeding grounds for DLC Centrists. Their purpose is supposed to be to help all Democratic House and Senate candidates win their races against Republicans.
The problem is they don't stay out of the primaries. They endorse the weakest, most centrist candidates whom they feel will be easiest to control in continuing their goals to serve their corporate masters. This was never more apparent than in Minnesota's 2006 Senate Campaign when centrist Amy Klobuchar who didn't really have positions on a lot of major topics was losing debates to the progressive Democratic candidate Ford Bell. Schumer ran the DSCC in, endorsed her before the primary was close to done, got big name Democrats to do fundraisers for her and voila, she had a boatload of cash and party backing to squash all opposition voices.
Those weak kneed candidates are the ones that the DCCC and DSCC constantly try to prop up. They want to infuse as much cash as possible into those candidates in specific winnable races where they can gain a seat, brag about it and claim that their strategy of a Republican, er, Centrist Democratic Party is what the voters want.
Then they act surprised when voters, the media, the pundits all see the forest for the trees and call this group of Democrats cowards when they vote for Bankruptcy laws that help Credit Card companies but not the middle class, or when they have a shot to end the war but refuse to cut off funding, when they can show backbone and stick up for the constitution and impeach Bush but don't lift a finger to do so, when they have a chance to stand up to Bush on FISA and telecom immunity and then let the bills even get to the floor.... well at least the House stepped up to the plate on that one.
In 2006 Democrats won in places they hadn't before. Thanks to the 50 state strategy employed by Howard Dean at the DNC. Considering it was his first national election as chair of the DNC and we won so big, I'd say he did a great job. Emanuel and Schumer went off on him for not limiting our money to races they targeted that we could win. Aka spend money only on a few seats in Blue states or in places where we absolutely know we can win.
That sort of alienates the rest of the Democratic Party who are trying to push back against the Republican majorities that this sort of ignorance created.
Obama's success in traditional red states is not just that he won in most of them, it's that he drew such large numbers of voters there. Voters that were not there before Howard Dean started employing his strategy to build the party in states that were not Democratic safe havens. The only way to win for the long term is to get into every state, every city, every region and get our message out there. Republicans count on and depend on these locations not having Democratic challengers and they have been able to maintain one voice, one theme on the airwaves in that area precisely because there has never been opposition there. In those cases many Democrats just refuse to vote. Why bother? Your party isn't putting out serious challengers or backing them in a meaningful way so you'll lose badly no matter what.
And that's precisely what's wrong with Nancy Pelosi here. Even when she has these people blackmailing her, she goes out and tells people to support another one of them.
There are organizations like MoveOn, Blue America, Progressive Democrats for America, etc that support progressive Democrats. That fight for candidates that aren't just status quo defenders of the rich. And short of telling people to go outside the party for help from these groups she should be telling people to help Howard Dean and the DNC out here.
Thanks to Hillary's prolonged primary battle, the DNC will be weakened considerably in the fundraising arena. Of course maybe that's what the Clintonites want since they hate Howard Dean anyways.
Even when it's clear she's in the right in a situation, Nancy Pelosi muffs the punt so to speak and fumbles away what would be an opportunity to finally recognize the impact people-driven politics has over the old-school lobbyist-funded fat cats that used to run the party. She could have driven people to places that support the power of grassroots and away from the DLCers who have helped kill the party in almost every way since Bill Clinton's 1992 election win.
In her best chance to do what was right, she couldn't even hang on to the ball.
Unfortunately for Democrats, Hillary is here to stay. Yes she has no shame about all the negative attacks her filthy dirty campaign has pulled. No shame over illegal contributions to her campaign, no shame over not releasing tax returns that would incriminate her even more. She certainly feels no shame for acting like she was some badass Rambo character who had to dodge sniper fire in Bosnia. Look, she's in Bosnia in this picture! See her RUNNING from the plane to dodge bullets? What a hero!
She'll stay in until she's destroyed the party and Barack Obama's chances of winning.
It's a sad state of affairs when you, who through political connections and your husband's past job title were assumed to be the presumptive nominee even before the primaries happened and then lied and trashed your way to being a pariah who should be lucky to even get a seat at the Convention let alone be considered a possible nominee.
The longer Hillary stays in the more Bush-like she becomes. And hey the Clintons admired Karl Rove anyway. With John Kerry and Al Gore in attendance at the dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, Bill Clinton pulled this stunt:
The Clintons recognize the skill Rove has brought to politics and admire his craft, if not his ideology. Just days after the November 2004 election, Bill Clinton pulled Rove aside at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas. "Hey, you did a marvelous job, it was just marvelous what you did," Clinton told Rove, according to the book "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. "I want to get you down to the library. I want to talk politics with you. You just did an incredible job, and I'd like to really get together with you and I think we could have a great conversation."
Obviously they decided to get playbook tips from Rove and have employed all of his dirtiest tricks in this campaign.
What's worse is, also like Bush, it is apparent the Clintons have encapsulated themselves in a bubble of yes men and yes women who only tell them what they want to hear.
But Clinton, a New York senator who has flirted with disaster before in the back-and-forth nominating battle with Obama, shrugs off growing predictions of doom and still sees at least a narrow path to victory.
"I hear it in the atmosphere," Clinton said of the increasingly loud chatter about whether she should drop out and let Democrats focus on the general election campaign. "But the most common thing that people say to me ... is 'Don't give up, keep going. We're with you.' And I feel really good about that because that's what I intend to do," she told reporters on Tuesday.
The sad part is if Hillary doesn't get it about the party, then her supporters are even worse.
To me that means either Hillary supporters are not Democrats (not unlike their candidate) to begin with or worse, racists. And she carries a lot of old Democratic support. Old Democrats, when it comes to race, are not much different than their Republican counterparts.
That pretty much says it all. You take that 28% and add them to the Republicans who are voting for Hillary in open primaries to try to mess with our nomination and you have exactly why Hillary is not supported by Democrats and needs to be stopped.
Finally, Mrs. Clinton’s aides hope that disclosures about Mr. Obama’s past like the one involving Mr. Wright could give superdelegates’ pause. Mr. Devine said he thought that at least in terms of Democratic primary voters Mr. Obama had turned the furor to his advantage with his speech on race.
“Obama, confronted by an issue that was boiling, seemed to wade into it with a speech that was in many ways profound,” Mr. Devine said. “As a result, now these people who were so interested and awakened by his candidacy are back with him again. Instead of this being a setback, it becomes an opportunity.”
But the audience now is as much the Democratic superdelegates, who are especially attuned to politics and questions of electability in the fall, as it is rank-and-file voters.
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.
That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.
Kind of hard to pin this on Obama if Bill has been in Wright's company as well... well actually just being in his company would be downplaying it....
Wright is the recipient of numerous awards, including three honorary doctorates and three presidential commendations. An accomplished musician and author, Wright has written four books, numerous articles and countless sermons and was named one of Ebony's top fifteen preachers. In addition to national and international ministry, Wright serves on several boards of directors and committees. Married to the Reverend Ramah Reed Wright, Wright has five children and three grandchildren.
All this does is point out the dirty, ridiculous tactics that the Clinton Campaign have been involved in.
Of course then you have the late breaking news tonight that Obama's passport security had been breached three times in Bush's State Dept. and that one of the three people involved was a former Bush and oh yeah Clinton connected appointee, Maura Harty.
Whether or not she devulged info to them or did it under direct orders is still not known but it is ridiculously suspicious and there is a tight relationship between the Bushes and Clintons. Obama is the outsider and common enemy here.
Hillary sure has a lot of surrogates doing the dirtiest of dirty work for her. Geraldine Ferraro, who was respected as the Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate in 1984 (let us not recall how badly they were destroyed at the polls in that race) flushed the last of her credibility down the drain by claiming that Obama's campaign was "playing the race card" and that the only reason he was in this position was because he was black.
I'd expect charges like this out of the members of the old Democratic Party. After all there was a shift of huge magnitude during the civil rights movement in which liberals and civil rights activists went from Republican to Democrat and a lot of the old racist Southern Democrats became the Republicans we see today. We shouldn't see these Democrats in this day and age, this removed from that movement. Yet you still hear comments like this that come up from time to time.
The problem for Ferraro is that she's gone on show after show not only defending the comment but claiming the victim from it. And she's said it before in 1988 about Jesse Jackson which proves this is a pattern of racism with her.
The problem for Hillary Clinton is after each of these racist comments from people associated with her campaign she makes a little vague comment that claims to reject it but never apologizes for it and doesn't force the people that say it out. Ferraro resigned on her own accord.
The irony of it is when Obama supporter Samantha Power made a completely valid reference to Hillary Clinton being a monster for her campaign tactics, the Clinton campaign cried foul to have her removed, which Obama did with great urgency. They also made similar cries about David Schuster at MSNBC when he commented that the Clinton Campaign was "pimping" Chelsea out to campaign all week. He was suspended.
Such accountability does not reside with Hillary's camp. Which makes sense since accountability doesn't exist to Bush either and that's who she is trying to mimic with her foreign policy stances and campaign tactics.
Hillary never apologizes for anything. She doesn't apologize for NAFTA, for the Iraq War Resolution, for saying McCain is more qualified to be President than Obama and she certainly isn't going to apologize for racists in her campaign. After all her own Husband started this and they seem eager to paint Obama as Jesse Jackson and pull him away from White voters in any way that they can.
Besides Ferraro and Bill, there was another perfect example of this in Texas when Adelfa Callejo, Hillary supporter and key latino community leader that the Clintons counted on said:
"Obama has the problem that he happens to be Black," said Callejo when asked if it was smart for Senator Barack Obama to reach out to Latino voters.
See video:
Now only after she got extreme heat for the comment did they backtrack and say they reject and denounce it, but it sure hasn't stopped others in the campaign from spreading this sort of tripe.
What's sad about this is it is bringing petty racism back into the public vernacular for this campaign. It's no longer about who is the best person for the job or the best candidate it's about the White Woman vs. the Black Muslim Man. And Muslim isn't even true!
That's how far down in the mud they have dragged Obama with them in their attempt to self destruct the party. The worrisome part is, have the Clintons, in which Bill always took pride in falsely claiming himself as "the first black president", destroyed this primary so badly that what was finally the transcendence of race in our nation, is now back to old school black and white race bait politics?
Keith Olbermann once again, hits it out of the park:
