17 posts tagged “election”

What started as Senator John McCain’s campaign strategy has become another interesting diversion from the problems here in America. 

It seems that a huge platform that Senator McCain is going to run on is foreign policy.  Over the past few weeks a new race card has been pulled by Senator McCain; the Jewish/Israeli card.  Over the past couple of weeks reposts of Senator McCain’s attacks on Senator Obama in front of largely Jewish crowds have set up another diversion from the core issues. 

I understand the question of foreign policy but speaking to Iran’s government or not is not the key issue on American’s minds.  It is a valid issue but, there are much bigger fish to fry. 

The fact that this argument is playing out in front of Jewish crowds is incredibly divisive and I find it to be an effort (which may not be intentional) to create one more racial divide within our country and this election season.  He is using people (in this case the Jewish population) to divide and conquer the nation. 

Now, Senator Obama has to address this issue with the Jewish community also.  Although this is a very valid issue, we here in America are loosing our jobs, can’t afford to put gas in our cars, and are loosing our medical programs due to cost.  Our government is trapped in a war with no plan on how and when we will be finished (I do not believe in the immediate pull out ideas, but I do believe in solid plans not possibly this, that, or a hundred years).

I am also one of those people who believes in tough diplomacy, but this not talking to folks for decades and decades is clearly a stupid failed idea.  Look at our relations with neighboring Cuba.  How long have we been practicing this kind of diplomacy with this tiny little island that is our neighbor and have achieved nothing. 

How many people are we not going to talk to anyway?  Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, Iran, etc. and anyone else that challenges us in any way.  It is probably time to look at things a little differently at this point in history where worldwide people have begin to like us less and less, our currency is falling like a brick in water, and we have shown the world that our government does not know how to plan a was or handle bad press.

We might want to at least start these processes over and at least look like we are trying to do better in the eyes of the rest of the world, before the entire planet turns on us and we are left a huge disaster.

Talking to a resistant person may not achieve much, but doing nothing achieves even less and while we are in big financial and military trouble our sanctions (threats) are beginning to carry less and less weight. 

Imagine you are in elementary school and there is this large bully who is always threatening everybody.  All of a sudden, one day, a much smaller child decides to take the chance of fighting this person only to find that the bully cannot fight that well at all.  In the middle of the fight the bully yells too you, if you don’t come help me I am going to beat you up.  Now you think, if you cannot beat that little child up what do your threats mean to me.  What do you do the next day when that child comes to you and demands your lunch money or else. 

The point is, we are still a super power with nuclear weapons.  The problem is we do not know how to fight wars any more and will not use the nuclear weapons which reduces us to a paper tiger of sorts in many cases.  

I hate to admit it, but the rhetoric about “more of the same” is right in this case.

We need to look at new strategies for world diplomacy or move to a point where we are really as dangerous as we threaten.  We either do something different or become ready to really blow up some countries civilians and all.  I suspect that we are at a point in history where that second option will never fly so we are only left with finding a different means of working with other nations.  In other words we are not able to back up all of our tough talk because the American people and many of their representatives on Capitol Hill are not interested in backing these things up.

We can talk tough about sanctions against Iran and continuing them against an already impoverished Cuba and on and on, but how has this been working for us.  What exactly do we threaten the oil producing section of the world with?

This is not about one candidate or another, I am just trying to state that I think it is time to rethink our foreign policy (particularly relative to those nations that we consider hard to deal with) and realize that we are not the same power that we were fifty or sixty years ago.  We cannot keep doing what we did forty or fifty years ago (which in some cases didn’t work then).

The Democratic Party’s activities from this weekend should be convincing evidence (when combined with the past few years of what has been done by the Republican Party) that the current party system and those in power cannot possibly produce a good presidency out of this year’s voting.  We need someone else and that person is nowhere to be found.

Let’s slow down and backtrack a bit to the Democratic National Committee mess.

The Hillary Clinton camp has completely lost its mind with desperation and Senator Barack Obama’s camp and the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee are afraid to say so.  The D.N.C. has agreed to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan but to only give them half votes.  The problem is that the Democratic Party has continued to allow Senator Clinton and her camp to go on with the outlandish demands she makes publicly hoping to create a big enough push by her supporters to force the party to give in to her unreasonable ideas.

The wildest of stupid suggestions I have heard was the idea the Clinton camp proposed to the D.N.C. that Senator Obama shouldn’t get any delegates from Michigan because his name was not on the ballot in that state.  Are these people serious.

Let me get this straight.  These states decided they were not important enough in the primary process so they were going to move their primary forward (the ironic thing is that with all of the ruckus to move primaries forward last year the states that came last turned out to be the ones who became more important).  Other states also had done the same which would make their move less impacting.   These two states decided they would move their primaries in front of the other states even though they knew it violated Democratic Party rules.  The Democratic National Committee informed these states that this was against party rules and would lead to the punishment of not having their votes count for the primaries.  These states moved their primaries anyway.  The D.N.C. stuck to its guns and its rules and did not allow the votes of these states to count with the approval of the candidates.  The candidates agreed also, not to campaign in these states and in Michigan some of the candidates (including Senator Barack Obama) pulled their names off of the ballot all together in support of the D.N.C.’s decision. 

Senator Clinton wins both states, but all of the candidates, including Senator Clinton had already agreed that the votes would not count. Then Senator Clinton turned out not to be the untouchable candidate that she had thought she was by loosing a string of primaries to Senator Obama.  All of a sudden the Clinton camp begins redirecting her campaign efforts to promoting how unfair it is that these votes are not being counted and a focus on getting them counted in her favor.  Her supporters begin to threaten the party saying if things don’t go her way they will vote for the most likely Republican candidate, Senator John McCain.

Why is this even still being discussed?  If the party as a whole cannot make rules that they can follow amongst themselves what business do these people have running our country.

Ave you ever bee in a grocery store or some such place and observed parenting that looks like this.  Little Jimmy, starts touching something little jimmy should not be touching. Mom or Dad or both tell little Jimmy to stop.  Little Jimmy doesn’t listen and keeps touching.  The parent or parents keep telling little Jimmy and then move to threatening little Jimmy.  Let’s say its “Jimmy if you don’t stop I am going to drag you out of this store and spank you!”  Little Jimmy keeps on and eventually breaks whatever it is. The parent says something like “Now look what you did Jimmy” and rushes little Jimmy to another isle and tries to act like it never happened.  Guess what little Jimmy starts doing in the next isle?  Of course, Little Jimmy starts touching more things.

Can our entire country be run like this?

Do not get me wrong, I think that the Republican party has shown clearly over the past few years that they are not capable of running this country, but now we are seeing the Democrats are no more capable than the Republicans.  But, are we content with simply picking the lesser of the evils.

The current Democrats in power are clearly swayed far too easily by pressure from powerful people (like the Clintons) to ignore what is right.  The vote to fully seat the delegates from Florida as voted in January received twelve votes for it and fifteen against.  These twelve people are the problem.  If there is a clear rule and several warnings that say if you do something so and so will be the consequences and within your own party you cannot stand your ground what kind of wishy-washy government would one led by such people turn out to be. 

If Senator Obama is not a strong enough leader to stand up to this sort of nonsense and not only say it is wrong, but get the general public to see it and turn on Senator Clinton for being so ridiculous, he is clearly not ready to be president either.

Of course, it seems obvious, that the fact that Senator Clinton and her supporters act so much like spoiled children who will do anything to win demonstrates that the country needs few things less than it needs this crazy Senator and her folks in office.

I have maintained and will continue to maintain that when you look at the voting records of these candidates and the actions of the three candidates we are flooded with information about, none of the three are a good option.  It is becoming clearer and clearer that a large percentage of the population is voting not for what is best for the country, but for some ideal represented by one candidate or the other regardless of if the person is crazy or will make a terrible president.  Someone somewhere has to come up with a better option for the American People and the good of the country.

Our country and its people are in far to fragile of a time in history right now to be putting a crazy person who has no business in the White House into the position that will most determine what happens to us for at least the next four years because they simply are Republican, Democrat, Black, White, a woman, a man, a veteran, upper-class, middleclass, he or she drinks beer and shots, he or she bowls or doesn’t bowl, that person’s pastor is crazy or not crazy.  We need to find the person who can take the reigns and do what is right from day one and is clearly not what either party has been doing for at least the past few years. 

None of these three are that person!

Senator Obama’s Medical records were released today saying he is in excellent health.  I suppose that that is in response to Senator McCain’s twelve hundred page medical report that concluded he was in good health also.

I have been wondering how you can have a twelve hundred page medical record that only represents a few years and have it say that you are in excellent health.  I personally believe that Senator McCain seems fit as can be, but I didn’t have a question about his health until I heard the size of his medical records and some of the ailments that had come out in the brief review of them that had been done.

I now have questions about any of these medical records and the public stamp of approval where some doctor or group of doctors say the person is in excellent health.  What is there about Senator Obama’s records that the “spin” doctors are not telling us?  Are there cancerous growth that were removed?  Were there major surgeries and reoccurring conditions?  What does this public declaration of perfect health really mean?

I suppose that the question is not if a doctor who happens to be a supporter thinks you are healthy enough to be president.  As a voter, I suppose the real question is; are there things in your medical records that I would not think leaves you healthy enough to be president.

This whole medical records thing, from both camps is simply showmanship as the whole thing is misleading and subjective.  The facts are not really being presented in the few hour the media had to look at John McCain’s medical records.  I also think that comparing the medical records of two people with such a gap in age is a little unfair and possibly unethical.  It is at the least a little rude.  I sure wish the election could stick to at least a majority of actual issues and useful facts instead of this nonsense. 

Presidential hopeful, Senator Hillary Clinton picked up a major endorsement today.  Today she announced that she has received the endorsement of Ricky Martin.  That’s right, Ricky Martin. 

I suppose as she is looking to gain some ground on Senator Obama in Puerto Rico, she would like to have the endorsement of familiar names, but this past his prime, pretty boy singer of Menudo fame?  The idea of announcing this at this point in the game is silly.  It makes it look like she is really reaching.

This added to the weird statements she and her husband have been making where they say that they are ahead in the popular vote by excluding states they don’t like to count and counting the votes of states where the campaigning didn’t take place and all of the candidates were not on the ballot, would almost be funny if there were no chance that she might be able to convince her party to back her the way she has convinced her supporters.

Senator Clinton and her husband have been pulling out the conspiracy theory card and the gender mistreatment card a lot over the past couple of weeks because the media has been so hard on her.  How could the media not be so hard on her? 

Don’t get me wrong, Senator Obama has had his silly moments too like the strange “Auschwitz” incident from last weekend, but some of the antics from the Clinton camp are so ridiculous that nobody can resist discussing them. 

Imagine a child that was just spotted by a parent trying to sneak a cookie from the cookie jar.  Just as the parent is about to scold the child, the child’s older brother, trying to steal the family car drives it through the garage door and starts trying to tell the parent it’s not a big deal.  Which one do you think the parent would confront immediately?

The need to discuss these things is multiplied by the fact that some people are taking these things very seriously.  Even some well educated and well spoken people get on the television and try to defend such nonsense fumbling around trying to make sense or at least sound like it. 

I am personally embarrassed for her and some of the most outspoken of her supporters.  I am not speaking from a perspective of today, I mean years from now when these clips resurface and people not caught up in the emotion of the moment are thinking through the nonsense that took place.  How will history view the making up of your own statistics that meet whatever need you feel you have?  How about the division in the party that is about to happen (it is already there, it is just the final explosion we are waiting for), who will be blamed when history reviews this period?  How about trying to get the vote to count in her favor from a state where her main competitors were not even on the ballot because of what the party stated and she publicly stated her support for?

Will the endorsement of pop Singer Ricky Martin change the race?  I say yes.  I think it will be a symbol of the ridiculous nature of this campaign.  Not the superdelegates, or realistic numbers and statistics, but it is the endorsement of Ricky Martin that best represents what is going on in the Clinton camp.  Nonsense!  That is what is going on. 

But I have to admit, this is not politics as usual, it is much crazier.

This endorsement, may gain some segment of support in Puerto Rico, but the fact it is so important to the Clinton campaign reduces the campaign to a sideshow.  And possibly the whole presidential race taking place this year.

Senator John McCain has just rejected the endorsement of televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley.  These are very influential right wing leaders and this is an interesting turn of events.

John Hagee was about to be Senator McCain’s version of that Wright person that has caused Senator Obama such trouble after and old tape emerged of him stating that Adolph Hitler was sent by God to help the Jews get to the Promised Land.

The Problem with Rod Parsley has to do with his comments about Islam being a violent religion.

The thing ii, with all of the statements about how he would have never gone to a church like the one Senator Obama went to for all of those years etc., he has absolutely no choice with these major players in the Republican Party but to turn his back on them. 

The question is how will this play out for him as he is trying to convince the skeptical party that he is Right Wing enough to be the Republican candidate. 

I wonder if the Democrats are thinking that all they have to do is look at every minister or televangelist that begins to support Senator McCain with a microscope and find something negative to put in the media.  If they can get Senator McCain to turn his back on every minister that attempts to support him, keeping in mind that the Christian Right Wing is skeptical of him to begin with, it is only a matter of time before they return the favor.

In these cases, he not only turned down their support, but he spoke out against them and their messages publicly.  Will they do the same and speak out to their large segments of the community against him. 

Isn’t it amazing how this sort of distraction has become the focus of the primaries of both the Democrats and the Republicans?  Realistically, a few years ago Senator McCain was screaming to the public about how the Religious Right was such a huge problem in this country, now he is counting on the support of these same people to carry him to the presidency.  These people, who were not in his corner to begin with, decided they would stand behind him because he is a Republican even though they were not huge fans. 

Well now what happens?  He needs the support and the people of whom we speak will not vote for a Democrat and this crazy guy just turned his back on them and then went one step deeper and spoke out against them publicly.

The Republicageddon is near.  The Republicans Party is already on the ropes according to the polls and the cracks in the party are starting to grow.  The question this election season is really which will come first; the Republicageddon or the implosion of the Democrats (the Democrolypse) with all of this crazy race stuff going on over there.

This has been such a good year for those of us who do not belong to a political party.  It is great to have already chosen to be outside of a system that you know to be crazy when everyone else is finally realizing how crazy it is.  Our party and election system is clearly broken.  This whole primary season is about racism, pastors and televangelists, crazy supporters (some of which are the candidate’s husbands), and stupidity.  Our government is playing party games using all of their energy to make the other party look bad while we are all forced out of our homes and go broke on gasoline.  Particularly confusing is how the Democrat ruled segments of government and the Republican White House are voting, vetoing, and fighting over everything. 

It looks like Senator McCain has finally gotten all the way into the pool of chaos.  It seemed like he was just putting his toes into the water before.  Let’s watch and enjoy as he begins to fight with his own support base and the Democrats destroy each other.

In Kentucky and West Virginia polls have shown that large numbers of voters stated that race was a big issue in their choice of candidates.  Most of those voters voted for Senator Hillary Clinton.  These two states are the big wins that she is waving before the world as the reason she is still running and the reason she is a better candidate for president. 

For the past few days I have listened to commentary about this issue and I have tried to keep an open mind.  The problem is that no matter how you cut it, if you say race is the main decision for why you are going to pick the candidate you are going to pick and you pick Senator Clinton over Senator Obama, what does that make you? 

I understand that this same phenomenon exists with Senator Obama who has completely stolen the African American vote from Senator Clinton and her clan, but the African American voting block is a small one and has not been used by Senator Obama as the reason he should be elected.

There is an obvious truth that is being avoided.  A few people in the media have carefully hinted to it and online it is much of the political conversation this week.  What is this truth?  The demographic that has kept Senator Clinton in the race over the past few weeks and that is what she says shows she is a better candidate is the racist Caucasian vote.  

The fact that both candidates have large blocks of their support that support them solely because of their race is a huge indicator of what is going on in the Democratic Party.  The party is divided along the lines of race and has large segments of it’s base tied up in racist populations and subcultures.

I am thankful that Senator Obama has spoken out against such things, but it is hard to believe with his church history and a certain Mr. Wright as a friend.  On the other hand, Senator Clinton seems happy to have the support of the newly discovered racist left wing voters.  This is a far cry from the past politics of her previous campaigns and her husband’s.

If Senator Clinton wishes to have a future in politics, keeping in mind that a much of her support in the past has come from African American voters, she needs to stand against this sort of thing publicly.  She needs to stand before the world and say, “I would rather loose than win off of a racist vote.”  Those kind of steps would do the whole country a bit of good.  Senator Obama could do with a little more of that ideology in his camp also.

The thing is, if the rest of her campaign is going to focus on her wins in states that said they voter for her because of race and on a win she achieved in a state where Senator Obama was not even on the ballot, God help us all if she somehow ends up being the candidate for the Democrats. 

If that terrible day arrives, she may as well shave her head and campaign wearing swastika arm bands.  She will immediately become the poster child for racism, particularly against African Americans.  The Lord only knows what will become of her party.

Healing and unifying the country cannot begin with you, if your support base is a base of racist people. 

I bet John McCain is glad he gave up on his attempts to stop Martin Luther King Day.

The odds against Senator Hillary Clinton are moving from highly unlikely, past impossible, to just stupid.  Her advisors are divided, some now saying she should drop out (so she might have a future in politics beyond this race) and some saying to keep on fighting to the bitter end (sort of the captain going down with the sinking ship).

It looks as if the battered Senator, Barack Obama, will be victorious after all in his bid to get the nod of the Democrats.  He has the lead in the popular vote (even though Senator Clinton keeps claiming the votes of the states he didn’t run in and one of which he wasn’t even on the ballot give her the lead). The problem is that the price has been heavy in terms of his electability.  The man who once was seen as the candidate to unify the country is now the face of the division of the party (thanks to Senator Clinton’s insistence on going down with the ship) and is the face of the racial divide still existing in the country (thanks to a certain Mr. Wright).

These candidates have beaten each other so badly that a presidential race that should have been easily won by the Democrats due to the unpopularity of the current Republican white house is now a pretty even fight between the Democrats and the Republicans.

I personally think the parties need to go or at least revamp their value systems and stands, but why go through so much effort to defeat yourselves?

The truth is that much of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Senator Hillary Clinton and her party’s inability to stop her when she is single-handedly destroying the party she claims to be building.  If Senator Clinton is the face of anything it is the face of stubborn, selfish people who will do anything not to lose.

When will these two stop this nonsense?  It seems that Senator Obama has moved on to campaigning against Senator McCain and that Senator McCain is campaigning against Senator Obama, but the truth is Senator Clinton is attacking both and her party is loosing in the end.

I am not sure what people are telling her to continue that have disguised themselves as good advisors, but they are definitely not loyal to her party or to her.  These people clearly feel this is the one big shot or they would be thinking about her getting the mark of being the person who ruined what should have been the easiest election ever.

Senator Clinton should stop now.  As an obviously selfish person, she should do it to preserve her legacy, her future in politics, and to avoid passing the mark of “crazy person” on to her daughter (who in public speaking seems to be the most sensible politically and otherwise in the family).  I believe these reasons should be her real reasons for leaving the race along with the facts that she keeps destroying her party’s chances at winning and the faith of the people in her party at all. 

But, it is a free country.  That means each individual has the right to look stupid in the public eye for all of us to watch in amazement.

Did I just see Senator Hillary Clinton on television saying she was ahead in the popular vote?  When I heard this I though I must have had my numbers confused or I had missed something.  Then I found out that her statement included to Florida and Michigan votes. 

This woman has successfully proven herself to be the craziest and scariest of all three of the candidates. 

I am astonished at this woman’s selfishness in being so desperate to win that she would continuously push to overturn the judgment of her own party and possibly destroy the party all together.  I am not convinced that the destruction of one, the other, or both of the parties is not a good thing, but I am astonished at who the political suicide bombers are.  The three candidates that are left seem to be unified in only one thing, the diligent effort to make their respective party look bad.

It is clear at this point that short of Senator Obama dying in a tragic accident, Senator Clinton has no chance of being the candidate to run against Senator John McCain unless it is for Vice-President.  But, she is rallying all of her support base by getting them to think she is actually ahead.  This means that when it is official that she has lost, her support base will feel that some injustice was done to her and that their votes were ignored.  That cannot be good for a party. 

If the “Democrolypse” is coming then Senator Clinton is Anti-Crat that will mislead people into following her into the destruction of her party’s world.  If she is successful it will be devastating, yet in a strange, twisted, independent voter sot of way, very entertaining.

Ladies and gentleman, another horse in the running for the presidential sweepstakes.  Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr has burst onto the presidential scene this week as a possible Libertarian Party candidate for president. 

“A what” You might ask..  A Libertarian.  You know, the people who finished forth four years ago behind George Bush, John Kerry, and even Ralph Nader.  I know it is hard to believe that there was anyone behind Ralph Nader, but there was this poor soul named Michael Badnarik, who ran as a Libertarian (who, did what).

But, don’t write this guy off so fast.  He has a little bit of end the war now for the Democrats and a little get tough on the borders for the Republicans.  He also has a lot of, breaking party lines for the true Independents.  If you add that to the fact that the longer these primaries go on the less the public likes the three candidates that are in place now, you get a possibility of actually winning.  It may be a remote chance, but the odds look better for him than they do for Senator Hillary Clinton right now and she is still being taken pretty seriously.

If nothing else, the confusion and division that Senator Clinton has caused for the Democrats can be mirrored by this former Republican’s resurfacing in a race where the Republican candidate has such shaky support from the party itself.

What a phenomenal development.  This is the great reality television that this election year continues to promise. 

We have had crazy staff, crazy supporters, crazy husbands, crazy clergy, several crazy candidates, but now we are about to get another wave of insanity.  Scary as it truly is, I cannot help but appreciate the entertainment of it all.

Since his primary win in North Carolina, Senator Barack Obama has moved from a gradual trickle to a near avalanche of superdelegates who have moved to support the senators bid for president.  The tide is so in Senator Obama’s favor that if this continues at anywhere near this pace there will be an absolute crushing of Senator Hillary Clinton within weeks in spite of the predicted wins in the next few primary states.

This has to be a blow to Senator Clinton and her support base.  With only a few more superdelgates for Senator Obama, Senator Clinton could win all of the remaining primaries and seat Florida and Michigan only to loose the Democrat’s nod and a whole lot of her own cash (not to mention whoever it is that is still throwing money into this sinking ship) 

I am not sure how this story ends, but I know it is looking more and more hopeless for Senator Clinton in light of the surge in support for Senator Obama.  As more primaries loom, I am wondering if the attacks are about to ramp up again further damaging the Democrats as a party and the popularity of each of the candidates. 

At what point does a determined candidate like Senator Clinton say that the remote possibility of creating a miracle come-from-behind win is not worth the risk of possibly damaging their party?  As I watch this whole thing unfold I am more and more convinced that her whole candidacy is completely about her and not a single sole else.  All of the ranting about the poor and the middleclass etc., is simply rhetoric.  I am left to ask, who is she loyal to.

If the party says certain states should be punished because of not respecting the rules of the party, to exert tremendous pressure publicly to override that ruling because you may gat a little closer to winning, even though it makes the ones you are supposed to be loyal to and representing look terrible, is incredibly self-centered.  To campaign in a state that your party instructed you not to campaign in so that you could plan this party revolt shows premeditated disloyalty. 

I admit I am not a fan of our current party system and usually welcome some venturing outside of traditional party boundaries, but I am not convinced this woman has any true loyalty to anyone but herself.  What kind of president would a person like that make?

I do believe however, that she is desperate enough to get into the Whitehouse that she will definitely run as a Vice-presidential candidate with Senator Obama if asked and prove to be a formidable opponent for the Republicans and other candidates.

The real problem is that a person with no loyalty whatsoever, has no value system that can outweigh the value of personal gain.  This is a person who would sellout anyone or group of person for money, power, and/or respect.  This is a seriously scary president or vice-president.