Evangelicals Want Perry for President

Rightwing Christian Evangelicals have been notably absent from the conversation on which of the current list of Republican candidates they would prefer to see be the nominee. And now we know why.

They want none of the above.

With two Mormons, one womanizer, one person of the wrong sex, one person of the wrong race, one ethically challenged and one milquetoast currently in the race it is no wonder that the evangelicals are singularly unimpressed.

So when Time learned that a conference call between evangelical leaders took place in early June, and that they agreed that they wanted Texas governor Rick Perry to run for president, can we be surprised?

From Time:

“In early June, TIME has learned, a group of prominent figures on the Christian Right held a conference call to discuss their dissatisfaction with the current GOP presidential field, and agreed that Rick Perry would be their preferred candidate if he entered the race. Among those on the call were Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; David Barton, the Texas activist and go-to historian for the Christian Right; and John Hagee.”

And believe me, Perry has the bonafides. He prayed for rain at Easter and got none, shuttering the fireworks stands at the 4^th of July, he prayed on the morning of his inauguration then destroyed the careers of 100,000 educators, and he is organizing “The Response,” a plan to bring 70,000 Christians together for 7 hours of prayer and fasting.

And he’s from The South.

Now if that doesn’t qualify you to run for President, nothing will.

And you know what? I agree with these guys. Perry ought to run. Thing is, I doubt he will. Rick Perry knows how bad he is at debate. He is awful. Michele Bachmann is a better debater than Rick Perry is. And while he got away with not debating Bill White in last year’s gubernatorial election, refusing to debate his fellow Republican candidates, and refusing to debate Barack Obama will not set well with Americans.

No, Rick Perry may be a great prayer (with little to show for in heavenly response) but he is a lousy debater.

Perry/Palin in 2012

What do you call it when you put a state governor who has spent too much time in that office on the same presidential ticket as a state governor that couldn’t even serve out her full first term as state governor?

A dream ticket.

A dream ticket, that is, for Democrats.

Rick Perry is running for president. He hasn’t declared it, not yet. But actions speak louder than words. When Rick Perry ran for re-election in this past mid-term election he didn’t debate his Democratic opponent or anyone else for that matter. And that, as it turns out, was not because he was afraid of what Bill White could do to him, although he would have been turned into mincemeat by a more thoughtful debater, it’s because Rick Perry wasn’t running against Bill White in the past election.

He was running against Barack Obama.

His landslide victory was not a result of a Texas electorate that was elated over his record as governor – they had no idea what his record was – it was about how Perry took up the battle cry of anti-federalism. Rick Perry is a “Tenther” of the first order – a states’ rights proponent of an order that we haven’t seen since the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And this hits an emotional chord with Teabaggers.

Teabaggers and Texans.

And now, according to this article in the Chron, Perry is taking his argument with the Feds to the national stage.

From the Chron:

“Perry is preparing to revamp the Republican Governors Association to focus more on policy and energize states' push-back against the federal government.”

“‘There's just no question that Rick Perry views his upcoming term as chairman as an opportunity to raise his issues and his national profile,’ says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.”

Rick Perry is running for president.

And nipping at his heels for the role of the populist candidate of greatest appeal to Teabaggers is former semi-governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Her well-timed book signing tour will keep her in the forefront of Teabagger politics as we head toward the inevitable hat-tossing contest that will occur early next year. With the Iowa Caucus only 14 months away, we will soon see the field of GOP candidates emerge. And you can bet that Perry and Palin will be there at the forefront.

Now Sarah Palin scared the bejesus out of independent voters in 2008. She is sure to do so again. Should Rick Perry be his party’s choice to run against Barack Obama in 2012 he would be insane to include her on his ticket. But who knows, that’s a year and a half away. Lots can happen.

What would happen, for example, if Rick Perry gets the nomination and chooses “Anyone but Palin” to be his running mate? Would this be enough to inflame his base and cause the schism in the GOP that I have been expecting?

Tax cuts for the rich that run up the deficit. Earmarks. Medicaid cuts. All of the things that Teabaggers are against Republicans seem to be for, but so far there has been no organized opposition to the Republican agenda by Teabaggers. But this would personify it for them.

Facts and issues don’t concern Teabaggers. But slighting Sarah Palin, the darling of the poor-spelling wearers of teabags and tricorn hats just might be the spark that we Democrats have been anticipating for some time now.

Obama’s Birth Certificate Found!

Continuing the conversation about misinformation, about how conservatives cling to their guns and misinformation, about how that clinging is reinforced when you try to refute the lies, I found an excellent way to shut these lunatics up about Obama’s birth certificate.

That’s right, the election is over and a biracial man is the President of the United States, something that these crazies simply can’t accept, so 6 months into his term, they continue to adopt the craziness that Republicans keep whipping up: that Obama was born in Kenya.

From the previous posting on The Backfire Effect, no amount of refutation or truth-telling will dissuade these nuts, it only reinforces their beliefs.

So why not go along with this farce? Heck, they won’t listen to reason anyway. Give them something so ludicrous that agrees with their premise that he is not an American.

That’s right, it’s actually spelled O’Bama.

UPDATE: I found the You Tube video that inspired this posting. Someone videotaped a town hall meeting conducted by Congressman Mike Castle (R - Delaware). Listen to the crazy lady. She makes that confused woman that told McCain that Obama was an Arab look absolutely lucid.

Listen to the crowd reaction. This isn't isolated to a few crazies, there are lots and lots of these lunatics. Finally listen to how the crowd emphasizes "Under God" when they take a flag salute break.

I’ll Say It: Rush Limbaugh for President

Let’s get real. Who is the best fit for the Grand Obstructionist Party in 2012? Who can the Party of NO put up to oppose the juggernaut that is the Obama Administration?

Sarah Palin? Give me a break. Besides being a woman, and no self-respecting white-haired puffy Republican man would ever want a woman for anything other than a cabinet post (keeping in mind that every Cabinet title starts with “Secretary of”), Sarah Palin brings no constituency with her, other than the 900,000 who prefer to live in darkness and twilight most of the year.

Other than Palin, all we have are a bunch of 1990’s retreads.

And Joe the Plumber.

OK, so let’s jump to the next generation. Eric Cantor, Republican congressman from Virginia has been making lots of noise lately. He is king of the one-liners, it seems. His comment that “‘I told you so’ politics won’t bring bipartisanship” has been oft quoted and repeated.

Eric Cantor.

Wait. Isn’t he Jewish?

Yep. Not only is he Jewish, but he is the only son of Abraham currently serving in Congress.

So, no. They will have to take a pass on Cantor. No Christ Killers in the Oval Office yet, at least not ones sent there by the Republican Christian Evangelical base. That would be too much for them to take.

And Bobby Jindal, the GOP’s own paean to ethnic diversity is a non-starter. Not after fumbling the ball in his near on air head-to-head joust with Barack Obama the evening of Obama’s address to the joint House and Senate last week.

Who does that leave? Who could possibly raise the Grand Obstructionist Party’s standard against “the Democrat menace?” Well, isn’t it already obvious? All you have to do is watch the news . . . and read the political cartoons. There is only one person capable of leading the Party of No to victory in 2012.

And that person, friends and neighbors, is Rush Limbaugh.

He is the perfect fit. And I’m not just talking about his 4XL shirt size. I’m talking about how he so neatly fits in with the Republican notion of truth. Of how careful Republicans are these days in forming opinions before checking their facts.

Take for example the case of Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack R-Palm Springs, former wife of Sonny Bono, who knew she had Barack Obama dead to rights when, in her attempt to oppose his stimulus package, decided to pounce on the president’s "pet project", the “Mag-Lev train from Disneyland to Las Vegas”, ordering her aide to “get him the bill, it's right there, show him.” Only to have her aide have to return to her and report “it’s not in the bill.”

Now that is what I call making sure of your facts before checking on them. Something that Rush Limbaugh has demonstrated time and time again. As a matter of fact, the facts that are most often repeated by the GOP office holders these days are the facts that they get from Rush Limbaugh or from Fox News. Limbaugh and Fox, the daring duo of truth in the right-thinking media. And who is Rush Limbaugh’s equal in Fox News? Why none other than Sean Hannity. That icon of the low hairline. He of the dragging knuckles.

So why not?

Why not propose the Republican Dream Ticket for 2012. Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity.

A ticket for the ages.

A one-way ticket to political oblivion.

Yes We Did

Exhausted tonight (this morning).

Photos and movies tomorrow.

And . . . oh yeah . . . we won.

Methodists to Bush Library Foundation: Not In My Backyard.

It is truly a sign of the times when a presidential library is having trouble finding a place to build itself. With an 81% disapproval rating (or, let’s say, a 19% approval rating), George W. Bush’s legacy, his presidential library, may find itself homeless.

And this time it’s all the fault of the Methodists.

The Methodists held their annual General Conference this past week. It adjourned just at about this writing. This conference is where they all get together annually and decide on policy. What hymnals to purchase, which countries to condemn and which to support, adoption of a new mission statement, the list goes on and on.

And one item on the agenda was a petition to The United Methodist Church’s conference to prevent the establishment of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas. This particular agenda item was voted out of committee to be presented to the entire conference where it received 844 Aye votes, and 20 No. That, by the way, amounts to a 97.7% disapproval rating.

The petition, written by one Diane Smock of Greenville, South Carolina, reads like this:

“I hereby petition the UMC General Conference to prevent leasing, selling, or otherwise participating in or supporting the presidential library for George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University. We should support separation of church and state, and if the Bush library goes on the SMU campus or property it will appear to the country and the world as an endorsement of that president by the United Methodist Church. Texas is a big state, surely there are other venues.”

Did you like that? Here is another petition signed by Methodist Church bishops and college professors.

Smock’s petition got overwhelming approval and was also approved by a huge majority to be referred to the South Central Jurisdictional conference, the group with immediate oversight of SMU.

Local rule and local policy and all that.

But when you get a message like this from the national conference it is going to look a little odd when you ignore it. South Central is going to have a problem explaining to the rest of the church why they went ahead and built a presidential library to commemorate the presidency that will make that of James Buchanan, long-regarded as the worst president in US history, seem absolutely brilliant by comparison.

Quite frankly, I am a little disappointed. I was looking forward to having the Bush Foundation spend half a billion dollars building this monument to stupidity. I was especially looking forward to the Bush Library “Think Tank” that was supposed to be included in the package. A George W. Bush “Think Tank”. Truly the mother of all oxymorons.

I am also disappointed that some of the library designs submitted to “The Chronicle of Higher Education” will all be for naught. There were some real doozeys. The most important rule in the competition was that the submissions must all be drawn on the backs of envelopes. They received over a hundred designs, and put up their favorites on their website to be voted upon. My favorite one, shown at right, was the winner.

My favorite part was the reflecting pool, where visitors to this library, which actually has no public access, can stare down at their reflections in the water, to “see in the reflection below who is to blame: themselves the voters.”

Senate Says McCain Can Run For President

Now, something tells me that nobody has been reading the US Constitution lately. When the Bush Regime negotiates with a foreign power on the deployment of troops within that foreign power’s borders, that’s called negotiating a treaty. But not according to the Bush Regime. According to them it’s a “Cooperation Agreement.” It’s a SOFA.

So we have the Executive Branch negotiating treaties and then ratifying them. But, you know, that’s what the Senate does. That’s in the Constitution.

No one is surprised, though. Time and time again the Executive Branch has ducked oversight and run ends-around on the concept of Separation of Powers.

And now we have the same thing happening in the Senate.

Today, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution that it was OK for John McCain to run for President. That’s fine. They can do that. They can just as well pass a resolution that John McCain is 35 years old (and still eligible to run for President) if that’s what floats their boat. It still doesn’t make it so.

No, I’m afraid the Senate has overstepped their authority. This question lies with the courts. It is, by long tradition, the Judicial Branch that interprets the Constitution.

Now I’m not saying that the courts are going to find that John McCain is ineligible to be President of the United States because he was born on a military base in Panama, and not on American soil. That would be giving the courts, and in particular, the US Supreme Court, too much credit. After all, by a 6-3 decision the US Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the question on whether states can charge a poll tax, in their requirement of a government issued photo ID, in order for a person to vote in an election.

If states can charge a poll tax, then most assuredly John McCain can be a natural born citizen.

But let’s do it correctly, OK? Let’s not follow the Bush Regime down that garden path to institutional urination on the US Constitution. After all, there are too many standing around and over it already and the drying out won’t begin until January.

John McCain: Temperamentally Unfit for the Presidency

While Democrats watch the back and forth of the primary campaigns, which are starting to look, to many, as a fight that continues despite the fact that the outcome is all but decided, John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, gallivants around the country without any public scrutiny whatsoever.
Well, almost.

What about this Washington Post piece by Michael Leahy that was published early this morning (4/20/08)? It is an instructive piece that bears reading from front to back (warning, four pages).

Leahy writes of the famous, some say infamous, McCain temper. A temper that has impelled former friends and aides to question whether having McCain in the Oval Office is necessarily a good idea. He includes anecdotal verifications from witnesses of some of McCain’s past behavior, with a temper that has been called “erratic” and “volcanic”.

Some excerpts from witnesses and targets of McCain’s temper have these things to say:

“Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: ‘His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him.’”

“’I heard about his temper more from others,’ said Grant Woods, McCain's first congressional chief of staff, who is generally regarded as McCain's closest confidant in his early political years. ‘According to them, he really unleashed on some of them, and they couldn't figure out why. . . . It happened enough that it was affecting his credibility with some people. If you wanted a programmed, subdued, always-on-message politician, he wasn't and will never be your guy.’”

“’What happens if he gets angry in crisis" in the presidency?’ Hinz asked. ‘It's difficult enough to be a negotiator, but it's almost impossible when you're the type of guy who's so angry at anybody who doesn't do what he wants. It's the president's job to negotiate and stay calm. I don't see that he has that quality.’”

Now listen. Over the past 7 years, Americans have been subjected to a president who has been intransigent in foreign policy, a president who has used his veto stamp more often than any other, a president who will not deal with the other branches of government to such an extent, that he creates one constitutional crisis after another. I am fairly certain that we Americans were not prepared for that. But this is different. Here we have a guy who will be the Republican presidential nominee with a 20-year track record of stubborn and angry intransigence, heated and self-elevating denigration of others. A man who makes enemies wherever he goes and has a long, long memory of people who have opposed him; a man with a vindictive streak almost as long.

With the recent turn of events in last week’s debate between Clinton and Obama, where the media has defended somewhere between 45 and 63 minutes of concentration on personal trivia rather than issues, we are now told that we know enough about how close the two candidates are on issues, but do not know about how they are as people. This, the media is now saying, is what was behind the Stephanopoulos and Gibson tag team trash talk that they called a debate.

Fine. That being the case, that people don’t care about the issues, but do care about how they “feel” about the candidates, whether they can trust this one more than that one, I say, fine. Then consider this: John McCain is temperamentally unsuited to be President of the United States. At best, what we can hope for if this man becomes president is a world that derides yet another president who cannot negotiate himself out of a wet paper bag.

At worst, we can expect endless war.

Well . . . no. I guess that’s not the worst case scenario. In the worst case, we can have a man in the Oval Office with an unchecked temper when the situation absolutely requires cool heads. A recipe for disaster.

Clinton: Most Delegates Are Unpledged

Citing a 1982 Democratic Party rule, the Clinton campaign has now embarked on a new crusade to create doubt that Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates.

Most states, the Clinton campaign says, do not compel their pledged delegates to honor their pledges. From CNN:

“‘I think what Mrs. Clinton was trying to make clear was that no delegate is required by party rules to vote for the candidate for which they're pledged,’ said [Clinton advisor, Harold] Ickes.”

“‘I mean obviously circumstances can change, and people's minds can change about the viability of a particular candidate and that's permitted now under our rules ever since the 1980 convention.’”

I think that the Clinton campaign makes a good point, but for other reasons than theirs. I am now in a place, a mindset let’s just say, that tells me that there might just be a little buyer’s remorse out there among the electorate.

And among Clinton pledged delegates.

This news about Clinton’s gross exaggeration of the danger she faced in her trip to Bosnia simply won’t go away, especially as she stubbornly refuses to admit to the “whopperness” of her more recent recollections of that trip, just as she stubbornly refused to admit her mistake in voting for war in Iraq. She now claims that she made those remarks that attempted to revise history, several times, by all accounts, because she was tired. Do I need to ask whether Hillary Clinton tells lies when she is tired? When Hillary Clinton is tired, does she suffer lapses in judgement? Is Hillary Clinton ever tired at, say, 3 AM? How does that work?

This grasping at excuses reveals a character flaw in Hillary Clinton, something that we also have in our currently sitting president: stubborn refusal to admit to a mistake. Just how far would Hillary Clinton go not to admit a mistake? As far as George W. Bush has?

I hope not, but can we as a nation dare to take that chance again?

Others have pointed out still more instances of Hillary Clinton’s gross exaggerations on her impact on government policy and on the importance of her negotiations with foreign powers. I really think that is just overkill.

After all, once you catch someone, anyone, in a lie like the one we caught Hillary Clinton in, the tendency is not to want to believe that person ever again, isn’t it?

How then, is that different for a politician running for President of the United States?

It isn’t, and I will just bet that there are some former Clinton supporters out there, as well as some Clinton “pledged delegates” (in quotes, because as Clinton’s own people say, they are not) who are now taking a second look at this candidate, and are coming away with doubts.

So as they say, “Let the birds fly as they may”. I’ll just bet that the Clinton campaign would no doubt be surprised by the result.

Credibility Gap Widens as Gallup Poll Confirms What Americans Already Know

A Gallup poll that came out last Tuesday reveals something that most Americans already knew: they don’t know whether Hillary Clinton is a trustworthy person.

It’s here at their website, comparing American respondents’ opinions on the three remaining presidential candidates. Of the three only Hillary Clinton has fewer people rating her as honest and trustworthy than rate her otherwise. Sixty-seven percent of respondents see John McCain as a straight shooter, vs 27% not trusting him. This is closely shadowed by Obama’s rating over the same question by 63% favorable to 29% unfavorable. Clinton’s score: 44% favorable and 53% unfavorable.

Note also that the undecideds are 6% for McCain, 8% for Obama, but 3% for Clinton.

Now this goes beyond all the rule changing we keep hearing coming from the Clinton campaign. First that all the Florida and Michigan votes must count even though these votes are tainted by events coming on the heels of the DNC rules that excluded their delegates from the national convention. And now most recently that a far better statistic for superdelegates to decide upon is how many electoral votes each has won so far.

Clinton claims she has won 219 electoral votes, where Obama has gained only 202. This statistic, they are now saying, points to how much more electable Hillary Clinton is than Barack Obama.

In reality, Hillary Clinton has won zero (0) electoral votes. So has Obama. Electoral votes are cast between two candidtates from two parties, not the same one unless John McCain wants to throw in the towel now. It is ludicrous to say that the states Clinton won will not also be won by Obama in November. It is also ludicrous to count states that will inevitably go for McCain. The reasoning is specious and suspect.

I wouldn’t trust someone who gave me that line of reasoning with holding my place in line at the movies.

And now we are all treated, by the news media and You Tube, to the latest of Hillary Clinton’s whoppers. It’s that Bosnia trip again. Her recounting of it, always so consistent in the past, and tracking right along to what she wrote in her book, Living History has always gone something like this:

“Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find”.

That can all be checked, you know, especially when there are so many eye witnesses. And on that incident, one that Clinton has recounted the same way time and time again, she recently added some twists that weren’t part of the narrative before.

And it makes her look really, really bad.

From You Tube:



Now this isn’t someone else spouting off opinions about things, someone that Barack Obama hasn’t any control over, someone who has no control over Barack Obama, these are the actual words of someone who wants to be president.

Words that turned out to be, in the words of her spin doctor, Howard Wolfson, not lies, not fibs, whoppers or gross exaggerations of the truth, none of that. “She misspoke,” said Wolfson.

Quite frankly, if there are those among us who are starting to wonder about these things, as I am, and haven’t voted in a primary yet, as I have, it is this sort of thing that I would be concentrating on: who you can trust to tell you the truth. God knows we've had enough of lies from the Executive Branch.

And if there are those who are starting to wonder about these things, and have already voted for Clinton in a primary, well maybe it’s time to wonder if you “misvoted”.

Bush Library at SMU to Take Out a La Madeleine

For reasons that eternally escape me, Texas’ Southern Methodist University wants to be the host of the George W. Bush Presidential Library. They have gone to some trouble to attract the Bush people, despite the fact that George Bush never attended the school, sticking to the Eastern Establishment’s prep and Ivy League schools.

Why not Yale, then? Heck George and Barbara paid enough money to get the boy through with a degree after all. Why not give him a library there?

Ah.

Not only has Yale been a big educator of great and not-so-great presidents, they actually have 19 presidential libraries in that they house the presidential papers of 19 presidents between George Washington and Woodrow Wilson.

Only since the presidency of that unforgettable president, Calvin Coolidge, have we built edifices just to house a single president’s presidential stuff.

There was even an early competition to get Dubya’s stuff on other campuses. Bayor thought they had it in the bag, being so close to Crawford, Texas. But alas, despite the fact that Baylor has acres after empty acres of university grounds on the banks of the Brazos River upon which to build a library, it was not to be. The Bush people wanted the library in a big city it seems, and SMU found itself alone in the bidding as an urban campus. The Bush people figured nobody would visit it if it were out in the country. Good point.

And therein lies the rub. SMU has no open acreage. The entire area is built up. Don’t believe me? Here is a Google Earth shot of the campus (click on it, it gets a little bigger). See that area in the lower right corner? That little strip next to the stadium? That area and the student housing behind it will be the future home of The George Dubya Bush Presidential Library.

Hey, maybe they’ll put a Starbucks on the corner – should be a killer location.

Unfortunately, all of those shops in that strip mall have got to go. They’re all built on university property anyway, so line up those bulldozers.

But wait, isn’t one of those establishments one of those cute boutique cafes called La Madeleine? Building Bush’s library is going to take out a La Madeleine? The infamy!

Local residents, upon hearing the news, are chiming in, in protest. From the Dallas Morning News:

“ ‘I'll be totally sick if I lose my cleaners, my La Madeleine, my drugstore, Horchow [Finale], even the bookstore,’ Highland Park resident Lori Collins, 57, said this week. ‘I love this strip.’ ”

This comes 4 years too late, you know. I wonder how many middle-aged white women would have withheld their vote for George Bush in 2004 had they known that he would be responsible for the obliteration of a La Madeleine café boutique?

It’s really still not too late. There is still another major city in the South (because you know the North will have nothing to do with this guy) where he can build his library. Ironically enough, the city I have in mind has lots and lots of open space, and has continued to have it, precisely because of George W. Bush. And I hear that land there, riverfront land no less, can still be had on the cheap.

My vote for the location of the George Dubya Bush Presidential “Liberry”? How about the 9th Ward of New Orleans, Louisiana?

LSU can sponsor it.

Geaux Tigers!

Is Clinton Appealing to the “Cracker Vote”?

I have to say, the events of the past few days have weighed heavily on how people perceive the Clinton campaign. I have wondered in the past how Hillary Clinton can be so nice and upbeat one day, and then come out the next day bellicose, and the next day in an attitude that can only be described as mocking. I have said it and heard it said, it’s almost as if Hillary Clinton has bipolar issues.

But we know that isn’t the case. We also know that the Clinton campaign has been fraught with infighting, and that has reflected back into the public with a candidate having, at best a bad hair day, and at worst, multiple personalities. Nothing can come close to conveying this sense of campaign implosion better than Keith Olbermann’s 12 March commentary on the Ferraro affair and beyond. In it, Olbermann doesn’t attack Clinton, he attacks her judgment in allowing things to go as far as they have, time and time again.

If you missed it, I highly recommend taking a listen. It’s over 9 minutes long but worth it.



Now, I put it to you this way. It’s either that Hillary Clinton has surrounded herself with some flaming incompetents who can’t put a consistent campaign face on, or it’s that the campaign has made a very cagey and considered move toward capturing the “Cracker Vote” in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.

James Carville himself characterizes Pennsylvania as “Pitsburgh on one side, Philadelphia on the other and Alabama in between”. Alabama, being the white kind of Alabama, not the black kind. If this is what the Clinton campaign is trying to do, then it is a very well-considered ploy. Not particularly laudable, but well-considered nonetheless.

Is this a carefully many-fronted orchestrated effort to bring out the anti-black vote? If so, they are to be both congratulated for a brilliant and timely piece of campaign stratagem and at the same time condemned for stomping on the sensibilities of people who, through words and actions, work to bring our multi-racial nation together.

On the other hand, if this is all just because of a mismanaged campaign, with too many soldiers firing cannons into the deck, is this not a reflection on Hillary Clinton’s ability to lead? How will she lead an entire nation if she can’t even direct the people who work for her?

Frankly, I don’t know which is worse.

Unrepentant Geraldine Digs Heels In

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I would have said that someone must have been misquoting the former vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Geraldine Ferraro has been all over the news today, on Fox News where she serves as a sometime commentator, and on NBC Nightly News just a few minutes ago, trying to throw all of her guff back into the Obama campaign’s collective face.

Incidentally, she resigned today from her fundraising position on the Clinton campaign.

She says that she did that to keep get “this” out of the news.

Then she proceeded to put it all front and center stage in the news.

No?

Why then, does she persist in calling Barack Obama an Uppity Negro? It’s true. And it’s getting pretty embarrassing for me as a Democrat. Ferraro has, get this, told the news media that Barack Obama is “playing the race card” in his attacks on her.

Now wait wait wait. Did I hear this correct? It is Barack Obama that is bringing race into the discussion? By crying “Foul” Barack Obama is introducing divisiveness into the campaign?

I have to ask here, who brought all of this up to begin with? Who made the fantastic claim that Barack Obama, by his advantage as a black man, has done so well in the presidential race. The former congresswoman is delusional.

What planet was she born on?

Is it her claim then, that she can say these inflammatory things in the middle of a heated campaign, and that the Obama campaign cannot respond in protest because to do so would be “playing the race card”?

The problem is, there are some out there that are so emotionally caught up with the notion of having a woman as the next president that these words will sound reasonable and logical.

And for the first time in the 21st century, allowing a justification of a verbal racial attack on a black person by a white person.

Time to retire, Geraldine. As to your closing remarks on your Fox News appearance, my guess is that the Obama campaign will not be requiring your services either.

Is McCain a Natural (Born) Man?

Talk about tilting at windmills. There’s a guy in Riverside, California, Andrew Aames, who is acting for a group known as the “Inland Empire Voters” in filing a lawsuit in federal court that seeks declaratory relief in that they claim that John McCain is not a natural born United States citizen.

And apparently that case is going to be heard by a federal judge.

The suit makes the case that John McCain, a navy brat, was born on the US Naval base in the Canal Zone, which was then a US territory. As such, McCain is not a natural born citizen of the United States. Here is the relevant portion of the US Constitution:

“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,…”

Hogwash, says McCain’s lawyer Ted Olsen. If that were the case, he says, Barry Goldwater, a presidential candidate in 1964, would not have been eligible either since he was born in Arizona Territory before 1913, the year Arizona became a state. But the case makes a unique point that I find tantalizing:

“In 1953 Congress passed legislation, Title 8 Section 1403 of the United States Code specifying that those persons born in the Canal Zone with at least one US citizen parent, are [or become?], United States citizens.”

Taking a stab at what they mean by all of this, I am guessing that the thrust of this argument is that prior to 1953, people born in the Canal Zone were not necessarily US citizens, but this was remedied by this act of Congress in 1953. McCain, having been born in 1936 then, was not a natural born US citizen when he was born.

Meaning of course, he is still not a natural born citizen since by definition you are either one when you are born, or you are not.

I find all of this really interesting but not entirely useful unless it is for something to talk about to impress your date. Why do I say this? It’s something that McCain attorney Ted Olsen is quoted as saying in every news article you read about this, when asked whether his client would prevail in this lawsuit, makes this prediction:

“I am confident that the United States Supreme Court, should it ever address the issue, would agree” [with him].

Considering that the Supreme Court is even more conservative, and even more politicized than it was in 2000 when it crowned George II, this is a very good, and very final point.

Daily Breeze: Geraldine Ferraro Says Obama is Black!!!

I have to laugh. I remember the small hometown daily newspaper, The Daily Breeze when I used to live in Southern California. Now, from its interview of Geraldine Ferraro last Friday, the lowly, modest and undersized Daily Breeze has had its story splashed across the pages of newspapers from coast to coast and worldwide.

And according to the article, Geraldine Ferraro says Barack Obama is a black man.

You know, I really, honestly haven’t even thought about Obama’s ancestry lately. People keep bringing it up though. As in “Isn’t it wonderful and a comment on our times that we are choosing between a woman and an African-American?”

Apparently, Geraldine Ferraro doesn’t think it’s wonderful.

Her comment, picked up by anyone with an ear to the ground, went like this:

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Was this a woman, a former vice-presidential candidate, mind you, who was just being brutally honest – as she must be thinking in her mind – or a woman, a former vice presidential candidate (mind you) who thinks that Barack Obama is being just a little bit too uppity?

This is a guy who is taking advantage of the fact that he is black, and THAT’S why he’s ahead in the national polls, the popular vote, the delegate count, and the number of states won in the primaries?

You have GOT to be kidding.

I started to think about this, and thought that if anyone thinks Obama is at an advantage because he is black, they haven’t stepped too far outside the past few years. Like outside to Bubba’s filling station in East Texas, where the locals are pretty convinced that the South will someday rise again. Or to downtown Houston, Cleveland or Atlanta, where Barack Obama’s middle name is uttered as if it were a slur.

I hear that Senator Clinton has renounced Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks, remarks that Ferraro has even defended in today’s issue of The Breeze (as we used to call it). That’s fine but I think it’s not enough. I think it behooves the Clinton campaign to return every dollar that Geraldine Ferraro raised for the Clinton campaign to Ferraro, so that she can, in turn, return that money to the donors. I also think it is time to dismiss Ferraro from her campaign.

It really makes me wonder how many women over 50, white women, have entertained these thoughts as well. If we have someone who is allegedly sophisticated in their racial outlook, as I am sure Geraldine is, say something like this without batting an eyelash, you really have to wonder about what kind of subliminal thoughts are driving some voters toward the Clinton campaign.

Is it truly about Obama being a black man? Is it truly about something with a black man that still scares older white women?

I very much hope not, but I am characteristically pessimistic.

In The Silly Season Straight Talk Goes South For the Summer

"Hilary Clinton has won states with about 260 electoral votes and Barack Obama has won states with about 190."

That’s what Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said this morning on “This Week”.

How can you argue against logic like that?

What, with only ten more electoral votes, we have a new president, right?

My question is this: How stupid do Governor Rendell and the Clinton campaign think we are? Some in my midst would have some disagreement with that statement but there are some things I think we can all figure out. Like how electoral votes are counted when you oppose a Republican, not another Democrat.

Stuff like that.

Does Governor Rendell, or any one in the Clinton campaign think that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, that people who voted for Clinton in the primaries will not vote for Obama in the general election? Their alternative, need I remind anyone, is to vote for Ralph Nader or Darth McCain.

So of course not. The argument is completely specious. It lacks any credibility and makes people suspicious and resentful. People see through these arguments like glass.

So I have this problem with the Clinton campaign. They won’t talk straight. They make up stories. I am guessing that this is an effect of the “kitchen sink” phenomenon.

And speaking of straight talk, what is all this with the Florida governor? He was on the same ABC program this morning. In the interview Governor Crist , a Republican, had this to say about holding a new vote in Florida to determine the delegate distribution at the Democratic National Convention:

“They exercised that precious right. I think that the Democratic National Committee should come to the common-sense conclusion that the right thing to do is to honor that vote.”

Now one would think that the governor was saying this because he and his Republican friends don’t want to foot the bill for another primary, but no one has mentioned that they should. In fact, any mention of a "re-do" in Florida also comes with proposals that the election be either entirely privately funded, or funded by each of the campaigns. No, in truth the Republican governor was simply driving the thorn in the side of Democrats a little deeper – maybe giving it a twist in the process. And maybe, since the winner of that damaged primary was Clinton, giving Clinton 105 delegates, Obama 70 and Edwards 29, netting Clinton 35 additional delegates, that could do its work in overturning the Obama lead in delegates, creating furor in the party that opposes Republicans, and give Republicans an easy win in November.

Certainly the Clinton campaign sees this by now. Howard Dean is exactly right in this argument when he said:

“[T]he only thing that can beat us is that we're divided. I have to run these rules so that the losing side feels they've been treated fairly”

I have said this before. Americans have an abiding sense of fair play and will not abide a cheater or someone who has the rules changed in mid course so that they can win. Partisans won’t care. They are with the Clintons because their passions take them there. It’s the swing voters I worry about.

Without the swing voters, Clinton can kiss the White House goodbye forever.

Obama has time on his side, and only needs another 4 years to get him some of that there experience that the Clinton campaign thinks he lacks.

Delegate Derby: Texas Two Step and Michigan and Florida Keep Coming Up

I don’t know. After the Texas primary I thought we would all be moving on to the future. Some of us haven’t. Admittedly, one of us is me.

I’m still watching the Texas caucus numbers. Those numbers at the Texas Democratic Party’s website have not budged since last night. I suppose someone told someone else to stop updating the website with current numbers to keep the speculation down, although I think the cat is out of the bag on that. What I think we can lay it to is transparency inaction.

So the numbers jump around a bit. That’s going to happen. But for the first time there is a microscope focused on this race. So I guess it’s best for the TDP to turn off the light source.

If anyone has been paying attention, they are still counting the Tuesday night caucus results. These are not electronic ballots, nor can they be optically scanned, it is all done by hand counting. And there are some stories of caucus improprieties going around, mainly about camp A, with the stories being spread by camp B, if you get what I mean. With 48 and change percent of the caucus votes counted, it looks like Barack Obama won the Texas caucus by taking either 37 or 38 of the available 67 caucus votes. Right now he’s polling at about 56%.

But the bandwagon has moved on and everyone is now focused on Pennsylvania. The irony is that the big news is breaking here that Obama seems to be winning the Texas caucus and will have a majority of the Texas delegates at the national convention, but it’s all a big yawn now everywhere else but here.

“So what?” the Clinton camp says “Hillary won the popular vote in Texas”. I would counter that Texas has an open primary, anyone can vote for the Democratic candidates, Limbaugh ditto-heads included. The caucus is, I think, more pure. I doubt that many Republicans deigned to caucus with the Democrats. No, what we are seeing with the caucus vote is more of an indication of who will actually come out and vote for the Democratic candidate in the fall.

There are those that complain about the arcane Texas system. Especially now that it doesn’t look promising for the Hillary Clinton campaign. To this I would say this: “these are the rules that everyone agreed to, stop complaining”.

And that brings me to Florida and Michigan. Also past tense, but it keeps coming up in the present and I would hazard a guess that it will be a factor in the future if the Clinton campaign continue to press the issue, and I see no reason they won’t – pressing the point can only help Clinton’s numbers and hurt Obama’s. And a win’s a win, right?

It is if you want to leave a scorched earth all the way to the polls in November. Most people, I think, are not terribly political, but most of them are fair-minded, and have a sense of what is right.

One of the things about being in the right is obeying the rules. Florida and Michigan, two states that moved their primaries before Super Tuesday, were told that if they did this, their elected delegates would not be given a seat at the Democratic Convention. They went ahead anyway, and for the most part everyone ignored those races once it was made known that their results were moot. Now the Clinton campaign wants those delegates, and they are making vast but specious arguments for the seating of them.

I like data, and one thing I found in looking at the data is that while Florida was contested, in that Obama was actually on the ballot, and Michigan’s primary was not (by Obama), the numbers truly reflect this. Witness the turnout data. In every state where Obama and Clinton stood toe to toe, Democratic voters turned up at the polls in record numbers, some states had double and even triple the voters that usually show up in a primary. Now look at Florida. In their 2004 primary, 732,731 voters came to vote for the presidential nominee in the Democratic primary. Contrast this to 2008 where 1,749,920 voters showed. Now compare that to Michigan’s primary. In 2004, Democratic voter turnout at their primary was 1,384,200. In 2008, where only Clinton, Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich appeared on the ballot voter turnout was 594,400.

My point is, is that while Florida’s turnout numbers followed the rest of the country, Michigan actually had a reverse trend. FEWER voters showed up to vote in Michigan this year than in the 2004 primary. Clearly, this was not a valid sampling of the voters’ preference. And to press the point, you wonder what the Florida results would have been had the Obama campaign spent any time there exciting the crowds.

Now I admire the Clinton campaign for their bulldog stance in this: win at any price, get the delegates, just get them. And if I were in a snowball fight I sure would want the Clinton campaign on my side. But it’s not a snowball fight. We’re talking about the Presidency here. A presidency that has been cast in shadows for the past 2 terms. A presidency that has been arguably unfairly wrenched from the hands of Democrats in 2000, and possibly again in 2004.

We don’t need a continuation of this in 2008. I think Americans are tired of people not playing by the rules, or in the case of the Bush Regime, breaking the laws of the land.

Let the rules be applied. Let the candidates win or lose by the rules, not by circumvention of the rules. Haven’t we all had enough of this?

Why I Did Not Vote For Hillary Clinton

I have to say, this primary season in Texas has been unlike no other in my memory. I have never seen such vitriol spewed about one candidate or the other – from people in their own party – than I have this time. It makes me a little uneasy that after having spent weeks working themselves into such a fever, whether some partisans will be able to find closure and regroup for our all out united assault on the White House this fall.

For this and a couple of other reasons, I have stayed away from making any criticism of Hillary Clinton as a candidate or as a possible president. I think it is counter-productive and doesn’t serve the party. Best, I told myself, to celebrate the positive features of Barack Obama than being negative over Hillary Clinton, who is someone I do respect. But here on election eve, maybe it is time for me to come clean and say what is bothering me: what it is about Hillary Clinton’s campaign that prevented me from supporting her.

First, I think I mentioned this before when I switched my allegiance from John Edwards, who bowed out of the race before Super Tuesday, to Barack Obama. The one constant that I found in either Edwards or Obama was their steadfast refusal to accept campaign contributions from lobbyists and PACs. I found their positions laudable and a promise that maybe an Edwards or an Obama presidency would be one where the people weren’t left out of the equation. Where lobbyists and corporations don’t have the first and last word on what is to be.

I didn’t see that in Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. In fact, Clinton made no bones about the fact that she would not refuse corporate PAC money or contributions from lobbyists. In fact, these contributions made up the core of her monetary support. In my mind I cannot erase the one movie scene that I saw last year when I drove into Houston to see one of the few screenings of Michael Moore’s film, “Sicko”. The scene where Moore superimposed the dollar figures given by the Health Insurance lobbies to influential DC legislators on their moving images. This included the figures given to well-known and now discredited legislators like Tom DeLay and Rick Santorum. Only one of the dollar amounts given to these individuals, overshadowed that given to Hillary Clinton by the health care industry organizations. The self same organizations that she fought a fierce battle against during her campaign to bring health insurance to all Americans during her husband’s presidency. Only Senator Rick Santorum received more than Clinton.

Well, you tell yourself that politics make strange bedfellows, and who is your enemy one day is your friend the next. I couldn’t live like that, but on the other hand, I am not running for president.

So is it an integrity issue or just an issue of political convenience? You tell me.

Now here is the other issue that I have with the Clinton campaign. It has been nagging at me for several months now and I just couldn’t put a finger on it. Then all of a sudden I had to ask myself: if Hillary Rodham Clinton is 61, and she says that she is, and she has claimed that the main thing that she brings to the race is her 35 years of experience, indeed comparing her experience with Barack Obama’s, and finding his lacking, I had to start doing some math. The math says that Hillary Clinton embarked on her career of public service right after getting out of law school. Indeed it was during her post-graduate studies that Hillary Rodham worked for the Children’s Defense Fund, a public service that is listed in her vitae. That and a stint on the staff of the House Judiciary committee in the early 70’s was the sum total of her post law school service. The next 5 years she spent in various capacities doing legal aid work. After that it becomes hazy where she was a mother, where she worked for law firms (private practice, not public service) where she was a wife, a first lady of Arkansas, then of the United States, and finally, when she landed her job as a US Senator from New York.

My point is, and I am not the only one to point this out, I don’t think that the Clinton campaign is being completely forthright with this “35 years of experience” stuff. Yes, it has been 35 years since she has been out of school, but that is the extent of it – 35 years-wise.

Truthfully, I have a problem with this exaggeration. I know that the other campaigns have been giving her a pass on this issue for some reason, but when you start hearing the same old saw, over and over, and no one steps up to challenge its veracity, you start to wonder.

That, in the end is why I don’t give Hillary Clinton a pass on the “35 years of experience” thing. The Obama campaign has, and so have all of the other campaigns that have since gone by the wayside. It is an excellent strategy to present oneself against a much younger competitor, but it just doesn’t translate into the fall.

So why didn’t I vote for Hillary Clinton?

In the fall, Democrats will win the White House, I am sure of it. I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton because I want my president to focus on the people, not the corporations. In this, actions speak louder than words. And I want my president to be forthright with the people and set tendencies to exaggerate aside.

That’s why.

O-Ba-MA . . .O-Ba-MA. . . O-Ba-MA. . . O-Ba-MA

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Crossover Voting For Obama, Blip or Scale Tipper?

I don’t think it is a secret anymore that Texas Republican voters are showing up at the polls to vote in the Democratic primary, and doing so to vote for Barack Obama. A small article in the Houston Chronicle had some anecdotal evidence to back this up.

Bennet Roth, in this Chron article, interviewed individuals in an Austin barbershop, Republicans who claim that they have voted, or will vote for Barack Obama. One thing he did not uncover was a vast Republican conspiracy to stack the deck against Hillary Clinton: there just wasn’t a unity there. Yes, some voters were definitely going out there to vote for Obama in order to, as one pollster put it “get rid of Clinton once and for all.” And some of these voters fully intend to turn around and vote for the Republican candidate in the fall. Yet, on the other hand, the same poll reports that 15% of these voters are disenchanted with the Republican party, or their choices, or both, and will continue on in the Fall to vote for Obama.

The first thing that comes to my mind, though, is the record turnout at the early vote polling sites, and how Democratic early voters outnumber Republican voters by anywhere between 2 and 4 to 1. Is the effect we are seeing a result of mass Republican cross-party voting? I really doubt it. First, look at the trend nationwide. In every state where a primary has already been held, Democrats have outnumbered Republicans at the polls, and this took place long before the Texas primary. Here and now in the Texas primary, the race for the Democratic nomination seems to have developed into Hillary Clinton’s last stand. So if early vote turnout numbers in Texas reflect a special effort by Republicans trying to “get rid of” Hillary, why do these turnout numbers match what we have seen in other states?

The Chron article exposed a fractionated Republican party. There appears to be no single-minded monolithic effort to send Republicans to the polls in droves to vote in the Democratic primary, despite what seems to be the case from an email being circulated last week and this week. This email, in short, would confirm the Clinton campaign’s worst fears, that Republicans are showing up at the polls to “get rid of the Clintons”. From the email:

“Since Texas has on open primary, Republicans and Independents should sign in at their polling place and request a Democratic ballot. They should then vote for Barack Obama. Even James Carville admits that if Hillary loses Texas, "she's done!" Republicans can help make this a reality!!! Just think, no more Clintons in the White House!”

It purports to have come from the website Republicans for Obama, and makes a specific reference to this URL, but nowhere on that URL is the message to be found. Indeed, if you check the website here, you will see reference to the email message, and this enigmatic explanation:

“It is not, nor has it ever been, the goal of this organization to support Barack in order to keep Hillary out of office. You can see the official statements of support for Senator Obama under the "About Us" and "Why Obama" tabs at the top of the page.”

“That said, there are many Republicans who have strong negative feelings toward both the Clintons, and toward Hillary in particular. While posters are free to express their feelings in our forums, those posts should not be considered representative of the membership of RFO as a whole, nor of the RFO leadership team itself.”

So it looks like the Republicans for Obama are disavowing this email, but don’t go as far as to say they don’t know where the email came from.

What this campaign is not, by all indications, is an Obama campaign attempt to torpedo Clinton’s chances in Texas. There is no evidence for it, and to suggest that it is part and parcel of the Obama campaign strategy, as some have suggested, is paranoid in the best of all worlds, and lunatic in the worst.

In the end, all this is going to do is further weaken the Republican Party. Let’s say that the party loses an invariant 15% of its moderate voters in all of their primaries as they vote for Democrats. Any Republican primary contest in Texas, with a moderate and a conservative in the race, will be favored toward the conservative. The resulting candidate pool of the Republican Party then, becomes skewed to the right as the rest of the nation goes left. Making the Republican Party of Texas even more of a national oddity than it already is.

But let’s add to the pile. If their fractious plan comes to fruition, Republicans in Texas will have helped to put Barack Obama over the top in his race, possibly tipping the scales in his favor for the nomination. All this does is put a statistically stronger candidate in as their opposition in November. So much for long-range thinking Republicans. By “getting rid of the Clintons” they will have had played a role in the creation of a Democratic presidency.

What the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks? A win’s a win.