7 posts tagged “sen”

Recent comments by Charles R. Black Jr., a key advisor to Senator John McCain have sparked a firestorm that is being fanned by the Senator Barack Obama’s camp.  Mr. Black merely stated that a terrorist attack during the campaign would strengthen Senator McCain’s presidential bid.  The real question in this campaign is what idiot picks these advisors?

This year seems to be plagued with crazy remarks from crazy advisors, supporters, friends, and family members that completely undermine the candidacy of the person they are trying to support.  Where are all of these people coming from and how can they be stopped. 

I do have to wonder, in light of what I have seen throughout this year if any of the serious candidates for president (Senator’s McCain, Obama, and Clinton) have shown themselves unable to fulfill the office of president simply because they have no ability to appoint the right people, discern which people are good or outright stupid advisors, and control the crazy people that are otherwise involved in their lives. 

If the campaigns of these three people are any indicator of what a presidency will look like, I certainly will pass. 

A huge part of a presidency finds it’s foundations in whom the president surrounds himself or herself with and appoints to major positions that have influence over the entire planet.  The people around the three serious candidates that we had been left with (now two) are amateurish (to put it politely). 

The mistakes and stupidity seen this year are not old Washington politics they are best classified as armature Washington stupidity.

Once again, I assert that clearly non e of the aforementioned candidates is ready to be president for the next four years and we need a better candidate from somewhere. 

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.

Senator John McCain is in Florida again attacking Senator Barack Obama’s statements about negotiating with “enemy” dictators and governments.   This time it is about having talks with the Castro family.  Does Senator McCain not want to get elected? 

I understand that in Florida there is a large Cuban population many of which do not like the Castro family (I am no fan of the Castro family myself) but he has again set himself up.  I ask you, what is the Senator Obama camp going to say?

1. Same old Washington.
2. Four more years of the failed Bush ideology.
3. We have been at this silence with the Cuban government for several decades and it hasn’t worked yet.  Senator McCain just wants to continue failed policies.
4. All of the above.

I personally think that Senator McCain is not good at campaigning at all.  Many of the things he says make sense, but his worst enemy seems to be himself.  It is as if he never gets past the word campaign to the word strategy. 

I am thoroughly amazed at his inability to move himself forward in this race while the Democrats are fully engaged in destroying each other.  He simply makes himself an easy target every time he is in the public eye.

Then he has gone to celebrate Cuban Independence Day.  I would say that he might have waited until about the time race relations began to come up again as he has just begun to overcome the stigma he had amongst African Americans as the face of opposition to celebrating Martin Luther King Day as a holiday.

If you have not yet heard of this issue, rest assured it will be coming as soon as all of the commotion in the Democratic Party subsides.  In 1983 Senator McCain voted against and spoke out against the Martin Luther King holiday.   The only reasoning he has given for this was being a young senator (not young in age however, he was almost 50 at the time), his state of Arizona didn’t have a large African American Population (I’m not touching that one), and he was fresh out of the military (are there few African Americans there also).   

As soon as race comes up, particularly up against Senator Obama, this will come up.  If you were paying attention on Martin Luther King Day this year, you may remember seeing Senator McCain trying to explain this to a group at what appeared to be some kind of rally only to get booed.  His only way to defend himself against the coming attacks from the Democrats I fit is in fact Senator Obama he ends up facing is to bring up that Wright person (if you are new to my blog I refuse to call him reverend as that is a show of respect I am not willing to afford this person), and that can only end with the whole he is a racist argument.

It seems to me that with all of the fighting amongst the democrats and the division building within their party he should have a pretty easy time.  The truth is nobody seems to be stopping him from setting himself up.  He is starting to look like a double agent that is trying to get a democrat in office.  Sort of a Kamikaze suicide bomber thrown at the Republican Party that will destroy the party and himself at the same time.

There must be someone in his campaign that can see this and stop him from making these grave errors in judgment?  I suppose with so many people jumping ship from his campaign staff, that person may not yet be in place, but he had better get that person there soon.

Yesterday Senator Hillary Clinton lost in one primary and barely squeezed out a win in another.  What this means is that her winning the popular vote just moved from incredibly impossible to a little more incredibly impossible.  This also moved her chances of winning over the remaining super-delegates highly unlikely.  Why are we still seeing all of this again?

Can we put an end to this finally.  I am ready to see Senator Obama limp into his contest with the lost Senator McCain.  I say Sen. Obama is limping (and probably bloody in a metaphoric sense) because of the terrible fight he has been in.  I say Sen. McCain is missing because, well, he’s missing.  He has been hiding out most of this time occasionally surfacing to say stupid things (I suppose Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama had plenty of friends, family, and supporters to handle that for them)

Senator Clinton was deep in the rhetoric over the past few days and not quite as deep in the money.  I think she is in deep trouble as of this weeks events.

Of course this vote took place on the same day all the economists teamed up to say the “Gas Tax Holiday” that her and Sen. McCain have been pushing is a stupid idea.  That means it probably did not have much time to settle in with yesterday’s voters, but by next week it will be deep in the psyche of all of us who own televisions or read newspapers.

Sen. Clinton has vowed to go on, like a good captain, strong, teary eyed, and holding the wheel as the ship sinks. 

Now, more statistics are starting to show up that clearly show that if Sen. Clinton does not win the popular vote and cannot get the super-delegates to vote her in as the candidate of choice they will refuse to vote for Sen. Obama, and may even vote for Sen. McCain.

Here’s a newsflash Hillary Clinton supporters:  It is so close to impossible for her to win at this point that I think Sen. Obama could shoot several of the super-delegates that are supporting in front of the media and still squeeze out a victory over Sen. Clinton.

But, from the standpoint of a spectator who does not belong to either party this is great.  The two Democratic gladiators are going to pummel each other before the winner gets thrown to the lions.  What could possibly be as exciting?

Then you have Rush Limbaugh who has been rallying Republicans to come together and vote in the Democrat’s primaries just to cause chaos.  Add this all to the chaos of any appearances of Former President Bill Clinton and the sheer excitement of an appearance of a certain Mr. Wright and you have excellent reality television.  What greater pursuit is there than sitting and watching other individuals go through excruciating and taxing circumstances just for our entertainment.

This is all fine and dandy until we come back to reality and realize we are all going to be stuck with one of these three for the next four years.  Then suddenly we realize that  we are all the next cast of the reality show that will be for the rest of the world to watch.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

If you watch, listen to, or read the commentaries on the primaries taking place every couple of weeks, the news has drifted into a public battle of race, age, and gender.  I have been struck by the amount of news that basically states that Senator Hillary Clinton is winning over middle class, whites (the exact words that the media seems to be comfortable using), older “white” voters and is campaigning to win over women.  The other side of the coin is that Senator Barack Obama is winning over African-American voters (in the media known as “black voters”) and new, young voters.

This race may not be what has split the party, but no matter how you think it got there, I think it is safe to say that, the party is split and it is being made obvious to the whole planet. 

The last few days of news has brought lots of stories and discussion about the possibility that events of this primary season are negatively affecting the party as a whole.  Some say that the events of the last few months are not negatively affecting the party.  Again, that may or may not be the case, but the party has a huge negative point at this minute:  The party is divided. 

I have been befuddled by how comfortable the media has been in reducing the campaigns to the group that seems to vote for the candidates.  Now we can all think of Sen. Clinton as the candidate of middleclass “white males” and “older white” voters while Sen. Obama as the candidate of African Americans and new voters.  But, in thinking about it, although these facts are uncomfortable, they are true and this is news.

The problem is not the reporting, the problem is that the Democrats are comfortable with this as a whole.  It does not matter if the party split yesterday, over this primary season, or ten years ago, it is still split and the gap between the different factions is growing. 

The problem has the potential to move from a large crack in the party to a completely broken party in the near future. 

If Sen. Obama wins, the middleclass white males will feel disenfranchised and may not be in as much of a hurry to vote for him simply because he is a Democrat.

If Sen. Clinton wins, by the overturning of the popular vote by superdelegates, or by getting the states that Sen. Obama did not campaign in to count, a large part of the African American community will feel cheated by the candidate that represents middleclass, “white” America.  Has the party not thought through how overriding the popular vote of the people or including the votes of states that the first African American candidate did not campaign in (in accordance with instructions from the party) would speak to the African American populous. 

In polls the voters have made it clear that if their respective candidate did not win, they may vote for a Republican, Independent, or at the least no longer affiliate themselves with the Democrats. 

Both middleclass “white” and the “black” voters are major demographics that have been the base of the party for the past few years.  One of these groups is likely to be alienated in the next few months.  Then what?  How about the young voters that are voting for the first time?  Alienate them and you have succeeded in alienating the future!

I suppose the party has counted on being to get the two candidates coming together after some sort of solution is reached and running together as presidential and vice-presidential candidates.  This would be the case normally, but this current unusually prolonged  primary season and the nature of the “firsts” represented in the candidates, has allowed more time for voters to get their heart set on their candidate and to foster more dislike for the opponent. 

The end of the party seems to be coming faster than the end of the primaries.  If I were a Democrat (and not a complete independent) I would think that this has to stop now, because this one presidency is not worth risking the destruction of the party.  As an independent that thinks the party system is broken, I think if the one party explodes in front of the entire planet it will force the government and the country as a whole to look at revamping the party system.

Today several respected economists came out publicly in opposition to the Gas Tax holiday proposed By Senator John McCain and later used by Senator Hillary Clinton to boost her campaign against Senator Barack Obama who opposes the idea.

Presidential hopefuls Senator John McCain and Senator Hillary Clinton have been pushing this Gas Tax Holiday in theory giving the American public a few month reprise from the High gasoline prices.  The plan involves eliminating the approximately nineteen cent federal gas tax and the approximately twenty-five cent diesel tax beginning Memorial Day all the way to Labor Day.

You may remember that when this idea was first proposed I posted a blog where I stated it was a bad idea.  I mention this because my view was not based on being an economist (because I am not one) but on simple common sense.  The truth is that if we come up with any idea that takes millions, billions, or trillions of dollars out of the national budget, the money has to come from somewhere to replace it (in this case we are talking about somewhere in the area of ten-billion dollars).  Nineteen cents is not worth some huge debt that shows up later to be paid for by taxing us.  The two dollars I would personally save a week is not enough for me to be willing to create a ten-billion dollar hole in the budget.

Today two-hundred top economists, four of which are Nobel prize winners, signed a letter completely rejecting this ridiculous idea.  This is the kiss of death for this stupid idea. 

Hillary Clinton has been trying to say she was the candidate most likely to turn the economy around and the polls have been growing in her favor in this area.  When I first heard her endorsement of this idea, I immediately knew she was not the economist she has been trying to sell herself as.  When she decided to put her stamp of approval on an idea about the economy that came from a candidate that states clearly that the economy is his weak point I realized she was capable of being just as ignorant as Senator Barack Obama was in associating with a certain Mr. Wright. 

Senator McCain has stated repeatedly that he is terrible with the economy (How can we take you seriously as a candidate at this point in history if this is the case?) so this is no surprise.  The surprise for me is that Sen. McCain and his campaign would decide that the place for him to come out of hiding and make his big stand was going to be on the battlefield of the economy.  I have to ask myself:  “Who though this would turn out well?”

Sen. McCain seems to end up in trouble every time he speaks publicly and the Republican party is sinking fast because of how unpopular the current presidency is.  If McCain is the current captain of the sinking Titanic why would Sen. Clinton jump on board the sinking ship. 

I do not give Sen. Obama as much credit as it would seem he should get for opposing the idea.  It would normally give us the idea that he is better in touch with the economy, but that is not the case. 

The truth is, the reason for his knowing this was a bad idea was because in the state that he represents currently, Illinois, they tried a similar idea and it failed miserably.  He simply knew it would fail because he was there the last time it failed. 

Again I say that I think that none of the three of these candidates is in fact a “good” choice.  I feel it is simply a matter of which one is the lesser of the evils.  In the case of the “Gas Tax Holiday” I score it this way:

Senator John McCain  -  Minus one-half point (only a half because I already knew he was terrible in terms of the economy)

Senator Hillary Clinton – Minus two points (this was such a stupid move on her part for so many reasons I think only taking two points away is being generous in trying to be fair)

Senator Barack Obama – Plus a half point - (he didn’t have any knowledge either way about the economy, he just got lucky)

As a side note, the Democrats, as a party, are working on drafting a proposal to help individual American’s at the pump without being such a stupid idea.

MoveOn.org has fired the first shots at the presumptive Republican candidate by running anti-McCain ads. The adds have quotes from both Senator McCain and President George Bush and are designed to get voters thinking about the election of Senator McCain as an extension of the troubled Bush presidency.

Senator McCain is in a catch twenty-two. He has gotten in trouble every time he has spoken publicly, but while he has been laying low waiting for the destruction of the Democratic Party (which seems eminent) he has been a sitting duck for an ambush such as this one.

It is amazing to watch the greatest opportunity he could have ever had slip out of his hands like this. I mean while the Democratic candidates are absolutely destroying each other, what better time to get into the public eye and be the one above the fray. Talk about missing an opportunity.

Now the battle has begun with an ambush and Senator McCain is going to start on the defensive.

Senator McCain is going to have to get into the public and start doing something noticeable pretty soon before the Democratic party begins the reconstruction process after the Democralypse or he will go down as one of the biggest losers ever.

A rolling stone gathers no moss and a stagnant candidate gathers no votes!