Afternoon Open Thread
Chat away...
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repost
It is clear to me that the DNC still hasn't properly addressed the issue of voter debacles and fraud, even after what it cost them/us 7 years ago!!!
Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree and because I am on this site, I would like to take advantage and ask this question
Is it in the DNC power to solve this (voter fraud), and if not, where does the responsibility lie?
I have very little confidence that votes and voters are not being messed with. Can we call in the U.N. to oversee?
I don't want to take the wrong group to task, but can't seem to get a straight answer as to why, after the wake up 7 years ago, and that republicaN party being in power and manipulation for the votes in the future, why this hasn't been hedged against and who is supposed to be doing that?
thanks
Posted by highserenity on March 13, 2008 at 04:48 PM
Thanks Michael!
Good afternoon/evening Dems!
http://www.serveoutloud.blogspot.com
Florida is having a very hard time right now. First a revote, then no revote. Too many egos at play in our state right now. Thanks for Governor Dean for trying to be fair. Good interview by him this morning on CNN.
Dean on American Morning says we need to find a fair way
Florida leaders I think actually believe they could handle losing half their delegates, but they pushed things way too far and lost all of them. When you are too greedy, you lose it all.
More about the loss of delegates and off and on revote
Someone asked about HRC's apology. I don't have a transcript but an article on it is here.
Finally, regarding my rant. The facts I presented are not an argument that it's Obama's turn to be president, or that it's not HRC's because white women have made more political advances in less than a century that African American men and women haven't made in a century and a half.
My posts were addressed to those who come in here swilling the kool-aid of people like ferraro and justifying personal attacks on Obama as an African American without even knowing if the charges hold water. I have taken these racial slights, and people telling me that I need to be put in my place personally. I have attacked HRC and her surrogates when they have made statements that are racially offensive. But what I've learned during the course of this election is that there may be a disconnect between the Democratic rhetoric of inclusion, and the Democratic reality of racial politics as nasty as anything that has come down the pipe since the dixiecrats of 1948 and the willie horton ads began the era of race baiting politics. If it takes igniting prejudices among working class whites to encourage them to vote Dem that's really troublesome.
I can't be a part of a party which mouths the right rhetoric on equal opportunity but when push comes to shove shows that there is a line of succession for inclusion and that white women are at the front of it, insisting that it's their turn.
Senators Clinton and Obama should be engaged in the battle of ideas on health care, NAFTA, Iraq. They are free to shade each other's records and experience in ways that accurately represent substantive difference but makes the case that they are the better candidate. That's as nasty as I want my politics.
There needs to be no more of this "I take him at his word that he's not a Muslim" or "She's a monster."
No more allowing surrogates to engage in attacks rooted in immutable traits of race and gender that by fate or fortune each one was born with.
I can tell you this, if my informal survey at the beautyshop this afternoon is representative African Americans are pissed about what has been coming out of the Clinton campaign. They are mad and ready to stay home in November.
These tactics might win the nomination, but I think the African American electorate is in no mood to vote for people who have so little regard for Obama that they say his race got him where he is.
That's all.
Posted by Butte on March 13, 2008 at 05:55 PM
Yea, I know. It was the "liberal asshat" that gave it away. But, I felt it necessary to reply, in case any other posters had gotten the wrong idea about what I said (but, I didn't think it was a hateful comment). Reason doesn't work on people who want to be sacred...
Change the CULTURE of how business is done in Washington
Change the MENTALITY of ______________________________
So sad that McCain came out against waterboarding, but where are Obama, and Clinton's voices? Why are they treating Bush with kid gloves for, do they fear him, like I do? Are they both Goodwill Ambassadors to his autocratic reign? They also need to super glue McCain and Bush together, that McCain is Bush's Putin puppet. Picture Bush giving McCain the waterboard Blackwater kiss of death.
It is time to sever the Bush bond to Washington. Our Putin needs to be retired in disgrace without a positive legacy but as a negative Benedict Arnold Constitution traitor. His Corporate Republic government has destroyed 224 year of "We the people" rule, where with his Executive Privilege, he has destroyed the scales of Justice's checks and balances.
I meant to post this
McCain: U.S. tortured detainees
John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee and former POW, says waterboarding prisoners is torture. The Arizona senator also believes he can beat Obama or Clinton because the U.S. is a 'right-of-center nation.'
Link
So Hillary and Obama can state as McCain did that waterboarding is torture.
youngpoet
Because Samantha Powers has been a hero of mine for many years, I was familiar with this---I know it isn't what you are looking for, but she would NOT hook up with Obama if she felt that he felt any different and I believe he is waiting to NAIL MCCAIN FOR THIS FOR NOVEMBER
Here is our problem people: You can not ignore the fact that saying "the historic candidacy" without acknowledging what it is exactly that is historic about it. Getting distracted by who deserves it more is self destructive. It will only polarize and discredit the accomplishments of both, and alter the end result leading to a McCain victory. It is incumbent upon us all to rise above this. We must not allow this to happen. We must speak harshly against anyone who encourages either side to hold their vote ransom with the full awareness that it is a real possible outcome. We must now acknowledge the threat posed by either side and figure out a solution that proves that we can rise to the occasion. In reality it is not the campaign of either two of these great candidates, but rather it is the mean spirited, spiteful attacks of each supporters that is preforming the scorched earth tactics against each other. Those members of this party that do not have such an emotional, prideful stake in all of this MUST stop all the back bitting and hateful attacks on whom ever they do not support and must start realizing that their role in all of this is to manage to keep the peace between the two camps. I am a woman and therefore have became emotionally attached to HRC, I through her feel a sense of pride... NOTHING anyone could try to tell me about her IS going to change the pride I feel about this. Nor do I pretend to think I can change the emotional connection and sense of great pride that the African American community feels for BO. Therefor,
I think we as a united democratic party must figure out a way to take advantage of all this.
Quote Obama: "Obama said in a statement Tuesday morning that Mukasey's "professed ignorance of the debate over the propriety of practices like 'waterboarding,' or simulated drowning, as a means of interrogation, was appalling."
Obama said Mukasey's reluctance to address issues of torture head on and his belief that the president "enjoys an unwritten right to secretly ignore any law or abridge our constitutional freedoms simply by invoking national security" disqualify him, despite the judge's legal credentials.
Quote Obama "Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction."
While this quote isn't directly addressing this issue, it always makes me think of waterboarding. I was on the fence about waterboarding until I saw a special about the Nuremberg Trials. Apparently, back then nobody was very excited about giving the Nazi's a fair trial. Thanks to FDR and Truman, the right decisions were made back then and America's moral compass pointed very true. America set a great example for the rest of the world. I'm not sure where we rank today but I doubt its very high. Torture is not part of what America is and Al Qaeda will truly wins the day we give up our freedoms and morals for "safety".
Posted by YoungPoet on March 13, 2008 at 06:18 PM
Yea, I think you might have missed this: Maverick Fails The Test: McCain Votes Against Waterboarding Ban.
Regardless of what he said, his actions prove that he will support the use of torture. And when the bill comes back after Bush vetoes it, we know how McCain will vote.
Posted by highserenity on March 13, 2008 at 06:36 PM
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin (paraphrased)
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 13, 4:31 AM ET
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton did something Wednesday night that she almost never does. She apologized. And once she started, she didn't seem able to stop.
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The New York senator, who is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, struck several sorry notes at an evening forum sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of more than 200 black community newspapers across the country.
Her biggest apology came in response to a question about comments by her husband, Bill Clinton, after the South Carolina primary, which Obama won handily. Bill Clinton said Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina when he ran for president in 1984 and 1988, a comment many viewed as belittling Obama's success.
"I want to put that in context. You know I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive," Hillary Clinton said. "We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama."
"Anyone who has followed my husband's public life or my public life know very well where we have stood and what we have stood for and who we have stood with," she said, acknowledging that whoever wins the nomination will have to heal the wounds of a bruising, historic contest.
"Once one of us has the nomination there will be a great effort to unify the Democratic party and we will do so, because, remember I have a lot of supporters who have voted for me in very large numbers and I would expect them to support Senator Obama if he were the nominee," she said.
The Clintons long have enjoyed overwhelming support from black voters, but that has been eclipsed during the primaries and caucuses by enthusiasm and support for Obama, who has pulled huge margins among black voters. Arguments over the role of race and gender have flared up repeatedly throughout the contest between Obama, who would be the nation's first black president, and Clinton, who would be its first female one.
Earlier in the day, Hillary Clinton supporter and fundraiser Geraldine Ferraro gave up her honorary position with Clinton's campaign after she said in an interview last week that Obama would not have made it this far if he were white. Obama said Ferraro's remarks were "ridiculous" and "wrong-headed."
Of Ferraro's comment, Hillary Clinton told her audience: "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply that it was said. Obviously she doesn't speak for the campaign, she doesn't speak for any of my positions, and she has resigned from being a member of my very large finance committee."
As first lady and senator, Clinton rarely cedes an inch to her critics. On the issue of her vote to authorize the Iraq war, for instance, she steadfastly has refused to apologize, coming close by saying she regrets it, despite calls from many anti-war voters in the party to make a more explicit mea culpa.
Her third conciliatory statement of the evening was more in keeping with that fighting stance.
Asked about the government's efforts in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina, Hillary Clinton turned an apology into a criticism of President Bush, who happened to be speaking at a Republican event in another room at the same hotel.
"I've said it publicly, and I say it privately: I apologize, and I am embarrassed that our government so mistreated our fellow citizens ... It was a national disgrace," she said.
hope, you said: "I am a woman and therefore have became emotionally attached to HRC, I through her feel a sense of pride... NOTHING anyone could try to tell me about her IS going to change the pride I feel about this. Nor do I pretend to think I can change the emotional connection and sense of great pride that the African American community feels for BO. "
and then that we are united and should take advantage of the quote you just stated.
You keep bringing up the divide, as ONLY being between women and blacks---(FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME, THIS IS NOT TRUE )
when on this very site your premis has been debunked.
this morning on this very site every non-African American woman over 50 who were here, declared for Obama. AND IT WAS DUE TO THE DIFFERENCE IN THE ISSUES, nothing more.
just because nothing anyone could tell you about Hillary would change your mind, because she is a woman, doesn't apply to the rest of us.
Please speak for yourself and stop telling us why we are choosing our candidates, when evidence is to the contrary.
I am sure there are many women who feel as you do, and African Americans also----but it certainly doesn't apply ALL, as you infere in your posts by leaving us out.
I think you mean well, but please stop
Continuing to bring it up indicates devisiveness.
hope23, I would like nothing better than to unite. I would like to feel that after a hard fought but issue focused campaign HRC came out on top and I could be happy that she won on issues and not on personalities. There is nothing wrong with having an emotional attachment to HRC as a woman or as a candidate.
I just get peeved when, perhaps out of frustration, there is lashing out in a way that uncivil when a person has offered an opinion to the contrary.
Some people seem to fault Obama for his popularity as if that made people dislike HRC.
The fact is that there has been a significant minority of people who disliked HRC long before Obama came along--even during the lewinsky scandal.
Since the time she entered the white house in 1993, that figure rose and has typically been around 40 percent consistently even though she was popular in NY.
That's not about Obama. For whatever reason people don't like her, she's got to fix that by lifting herself up rather than tearing him down.
One of her most endearing moments of this campaign was during the NH debate when she was told that Obama was more popular than she and her response was "that hurts my feelings." It was cute and I think a key to her success in that state.
I agree with Olbermann, she needs to get a grip on her campaign, be who her resume says she is, rather than what wolfson, penn, carville, and maybe even WJC want her to be.
If she wants women to support her across the racial lines, she needs to show how a woman's way of doing things can be more productive than the masculine way. She needs to connect with those who don't identify themselves as feminist (and most women do not) in a way that they recognize as womanly.
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664_pf.html
High,
I am not trying to persuade you or any one else to support HRC. I am not stating that all women are or should support her either. I am appealing to those people who are not emotionally attached to one side or the other to acknowledge that the risk of pissing one side off is very real and to some how start unifying the party.
So high if your choice is about policy and not driven by emotion then I am calling on you to start articulating what is at stake if we don't have a dem in office.
Veneita,
I will support Obama if he wins period.
will you support her?
let's bury hillary under charges of racism. then we can watch the right bury obama behind his wacko minister's rants and then we can watch the real ruling class racists from the republican party lock up the supreme court with one more nut ball appointment and then we can watch it make segregation the law of the land.....boy this is sure a different electoral season than the one i had hoped for...would someone put a mirror under doctor dean's nose and see if he is still alive because i think he or his corpse is supposed to be offering leadership in this time of intraparty madness.
hope23 you are calling on me to START articulating what is at stake and that we need to UNITE?
Please go back and read my posts---even just today's It is exactly what I have been doing while you weren't here.
could you answer my original question, that I wrote right here, at the very beginning of the afternoon string, and at the end of the morning string about voter debaunkles and fraud that threatens THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY today as it has for the last 7 years?????????
It seems to me that you "pop on" once in a while and address someone without even bothering to "catch up" with what that person has said.
We had this discussion once before when you accused me of doing nothing on this site since I have been here except attacking Hillary, when that was about as far from the truth as you could get ---and then I felt in a position that I had to prove it, which I did.
It is very angering to have someone constantly using the attack, therefore put your opponent in a defend mode. I am very glad that at least one of the candidates for President of the United States is a lot better at sidestepping this than I am.
Of course, if the goal is to anger, then------
Wasted time.
I am done
hope23
I wish I could say at this point, absolutely to your question will I support HRC if she is the nominee. Today my answer is no. I've been through this cycle before. After NH and SC, I said hell no I won't vote for her. Then things calmed down and I thought if she's the nominee, I can support her. However, given recent events I'm back to hell no at the moment. It all depends on how she garners the nomination if it's fair "yes" if by foul, probably not.
One of the things that's a major concern for me is whether I feel comfortable that the person I'm voting for is the person I'm going to get.
In 1992, I liked HRC--not WJC although he was more popular with the public than HRC was. He was not my first choice, I had concerns about the adultery.
I got over my reservations and voted for him twice. When the lewinsky thing broke, I regretted my voted. I only began to miss him because bush2 was so bad. Like many with nostalgia, HRC's candidacy was an opportunity to get back to some of the good economic times of the 90s but I didn't want the poisonous politics. Enter Barack Obama . . . and the rest is history.
Honestly, I am angry. I know a conservative court won't be good for my daughter's reproductive freedom. I now a conservative congress will not be good for the causes I believe in. But at this moment, I honestly don't care. I don't believe Dems who would say such things have my best interests at heart. After all, WJC's policies had an adverse effect on African Americans.
I'd like to get back to the place where I feel that this is a space to build unity. At present I find it a place to come in and push back against those who don't see the primary as an opportunity for us to select our standard bearer but who see it as a zero-sum game which means they have to trash Obama.
I'm blinded by my need to support him and defend him by any means necessary.
So who knows how I will feel once the dust settles. How I feel about a potential HRC nomination has everything to do with how she conducts her campaign and whether or not she can craft a message that makes all of me feel like a valued participant. But remember if I come over to support her, I'm only one person.
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