Obama is America's chance to atone for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi noncombatants. If we create a warm and fuzzy Hallmark moment maybe all of our culpability will be washed away.


Government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Direct Democracy

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Mainly because Hillary is loosing. This morning on Meet the Press there were surveys on why people did or did not like the candidates. The last statement She's a real bitch. They didn't actually say bitch, said it rhymes with rich. As a woman, I was shocked and angered. I have never seen anything like this on a national survey in my 60 years. I have never seen a reason listed on a survey saying HE is a real bastard. Russert just had a shit eating grin on his face. Who says this campaign is not biased? I have seen it the whole campaign with snide remarks about her clothes, her wrinkles etc. We have even been asked if we really want to see her age right before our eyes while in the Whitehouse? When men cry on TV, he's showing emmotion and isn't that wonderful. Let Hil just get misty and it's fake or it proves she's unstable.
Michelle Obama may be proud of this country, but today I am sad for half the country.
And the funny thing about this, I am not a Clinton supporter.

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Bill Clinton was a very good president but unfortunately his presidency was line with division. It was the 68 Hippie Generation, extreme left liberals, against hardworking social conservative church going Americans.

Obama do not cater to neither fraction. He caters to all Americans. His base is not extremist but Americans of all fractions, race, gender, religion, social status etc.

Hillary Clinton is even more divisive than was Bill Clinton, more radical. (Although in an European context she would be a moderate conservative.)

I think it is time for Hillary Clinton to back down, If teh campaign goes any further it ill get dirtier and teh dirtier it gets the more teh people will get disenchanted with any Democrat candidate that wins. The more chance McCain has to win. You must remember that Obama only leads by 51 % over McCain and anything that undermines his position might tip the balance.

If you are a Democrat vote for Obama and if you are a Republican vote for McCain. For us that are neither Republican nor Democrat it is a very hard choice. I like neither Clinton, Obama or McCain since their economic policies stink, too much Big Government and invasion of privacy.

No give the power back were it belongs, to the People. first step is to give it back to the individual States. I believe in direct democracy as in Switzerland. You get an extremely stable government. Expensive reforms never pass without explaining the pros and cons. If the pros is not obvious there is no reforms. Switzerland has because of this one of the worlds strongest economies and social welfare systems.

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The text of the Ohio debate is the real key to understanding why Clinton’s campaign has imploded. If you take the time to review the text it reveals the moral failure of Clinton and her campaign.

Tim Russert’s question about what would happen if after withdrawing our troops from Iraq we found ourselves facing a situation in which al Qaeda exploited the vacuum by taking control of part of the country to use as a base to mount another 9/11 attack? This question is one that John McCain has raised and is sure to be raised in the coming campaign. Just to make the scenario more interesting, Russert posited that what passed for the Iraqi government had told us they did not want us to intervene.

The heart of the question, lay in its masterful focus on the heart of leadership, for it is in a crisis that we find out a leader’s true values. People need to see values translated into actions, especially during a crisis in which all a leader has to fall back upon is who they are and what they stand for. Curiously, in some ways these critical decisions evidence even more the qualities of authenticity and values that lie at the heart of transformational leadership, for these qualities may be all a leader has for guidance in those moments. As CNN’s Campbell Brown stated during the Texas Democratic Presidential Debate, “A leader’s judgment is most tested in a time of crisis.”

Clinton’s answer said everything about why she is losing this election and why she will not make a good President. First, she tries to dodge the question by saying she won’t deal with hypothetical situations. That may be a reasonable response to some off-the-wall impossibility, but the scenario Russert proposed has been on the table for some time as a real possibility following an American withdrawal.

Clinton’s attempt to shrug off Russert’s probing represented a moral and intellectual failure. It was plain from her attempt to avoid answering the question that neither she nor her staff had thought about this possibility or rehearsed an answer. We all know that is exactly why Iraq has turned into a mess: because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney never considered alternative scenarios when they brazenly invaded the country. In their hearts they knew they were right, so they never believed the country would fall into the sectarian chaos it has become.

The moral failure in Clinton’s dodging the question also was one of cowardice. She lacked a prepared answer, so she refused to give one. Unfortunately leaders and Presidents do not have that luxury. Whether it is an organization or the White House, you want someone in charge who WILL think about alternatives and who is not afraid to answer difficult questions.

Russert’s pit-bull personality can sometimes be grating, but in this case it proved an asset, because he would not let Clinton dodge the question. It was the rambling answer she finally gave that truly revealed her moral failure. You could almost see her triangulating as she spoke like a fifth-grader wondering about a trick question. Her triangulating told her the trick was an attempt to bring up the issue that has dogged her throughout this campaign–her vote in favor of the Iraq War. That even after Tim Russert’s probing we don’t have an answer is troubling.

In sharp contrast to Clinton, Barack Obama had no trouble dealing with hypothetical scenarios. If his answer showed that he also had not totally thought this issue through, it did show that in a crisis he could call on core values without waiting for the pollsters.

linked text

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This post is absurd, another yawner about Clinton being the witch, Obama the saint.

Hillary Clinton will be president.

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Either way--I actually switched camps from Hillary to Obama--but I would like to see the dual ticket one way or the other.

I agree with the article's assessment of a macrotrend. That is a good thing. Two books of interest about these things: Malcolm Goodwell's Tipping Point and sorry-forgot the Lebanese-American author's name: Black Swan.

The analogy is that you don't see a black swan amidst the white and for a long time, people didn't even think they existed. They do.

Obama is part of the movement that is summed up by Victor Hugo: There is no army that can stop an idea whose time has come.

I, for one--am at least hopeful that no matter which way this Democratic Primary goes--there will be change. Good change.

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I mean come on now.

Microtrends is the problem with the Clinton campaign. The candidate that IS Hillary Clinton is more a creation of than a person. The idea was to divide us into many small groups and win enough of these to get elected. Penn's book was the blueprint. This failed because the Democratic party had been doing this by default for many years. The Republicans used to call it "special interests", the various grouping of single issue voters that aligned with the Democrats.

The problem was that identity politics is the past, and the Penn didn't get it. The best example of this was after SC when they wrote off the Black vote for the Latino vote. You didn't have to be Black to see the divisiveness hurting all of us by this tactic.

Also the way women were campaigned to. Younger women were written off so the campaign went with a "second wave feminism" message to keep the older ones. Again, dividing us in a way we don't want to be anymore.

On the other hand, Obama starts with the issues that unite us, like the war. He brings in many interests together to take on the issues that may not be part of our identities, but we support anyway. The Obama movement is very diverse and comes together in the venues of the campaign. It is the mass meeting vs. many smaller campaign events of homogeneous groups that makes the difference here.

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Remember WWII? It was fought by Democrats. And was it fought? Just watch some of those History Channel docs - flamethrowing Japs, nuking Japs etc. etc.

Fast-forward to Vietnam: New Deal Dems are at it again: delivering double whammy: a war on poverty and a war against communist encroachment in Asia.

Fast-forward again to today: if the Dems get in, you will see more conflict, the only difference will be that all the bombing etc. will be done according to international law. Just like a good lawyer, Obama will make sure the right language is used and all the papers are filed with the judge. But will any of that matter if you are the sorry sucker at the bad end of a B2 bomber? I don't think so.

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There are undoubtedly more reasons than one for why Obama has been doing so well and Clinton has been fading in this campaign. Here's one reason I think is important.

During this Bush/Cheney administration, and especially in relation to many aspects of the war in Iraq, Bush has ignored and put down the views and desires of "we the people" in this country as well as the leaders and people of so many other countries. On top of that, Bush has been steadily carving away at our rights and freedoms, all of which is, of course, being done in the name of providing for our security so we can enjoy our rights and freedoms - as long as we're content to live under an imperial presidency.

Obama seems to be offering the possibility that "we the people" will actually once again be able to become involved in the processes of governing our country - of governing ourselves - because we will be listened to and our opinions will be given serious consideration rather than being dismissed, and because we will be asked to once again participate as builders of a strong nation that values and supports a wide range of diversity, and because "we the people" will be re-presented by our elected representatives, most especially our president, to the people of the world for who we really are - citizens of a peace loving nation that support the rights, freedoms and welfare of all people everywhere. At the micro level, this has to do with "we the people" being re-empowered as individuals, not as groups/segments/sectors that preserve and serve distinctions and differences. At the macro level, this has to do with a sense that "we the people" are being offered an opportunity to combine the strengths of all aspects of our diversity so we can work in unison towards unity.

Clinton falls somewhere in between the unfortunate realities of Bush/Cheney and the hope of Obama. Unfortunately for Clinton, "we the people" are so tired of, so disgusted with and so angry about the ways and means of Bush/Cheney that we are ready for Obama who seems to be offering a bigger step than Clinton is offering away from what we know we don't want and towards what we do want - what we want to get back to.

Fortunately for Obama, he seems to be the right person at the right time to counter what we've been stuck with in Bush/Cheney. Unfortunately for us, we as a whole are not yet ready for a really big step away from being stuck in the Bushes such as might have been offered by Kucinich or someone similar him. We have a long ways to go in changing our country and although Obama seems to be offering but a small step in the right direction, at least it is a step and it is in the right direction. Clinton is too hobbled by the past to offer us a real chance to make a real step.

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Mark Penn's approach to political campaigns is reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld's approach to Iraq and the U.S. military in general during his tenure as Defense Secretary. Rumseld prized his own perspective on "modernizing" the U.S. armed forces above all else. Whether it was the best approach to fighting the war in question (and a bad war at that) was secondary. Similarly, Penn cares more about his own sociopolitical theories than about the success of his candidate's campaign. And you know what? I'm glad he does. As a result, Democrats get the better nominee, against all odds. Thanks, Mark, for the small favor of your incredible hubris.

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1. Despite the MSM coronation, Obama has not won the nomination, yet.

2. Hillary is not going to concede anytime soon, and in all probability certainly not before the convention. IN SPITE OF all the conjecture and pressure and "inevitability" put forth by the GOP owned MSM.

3. Obama might well be FORCED to concede before the convention due to certain events in his recent adult past coming to light in the MSM due to internet momentum and snowballing.

4. The superdelegate voting in the convention is by SECRET BALLOT: most superdelegates can easily vote for Hillary while telling their constituents something entirely different, and some certainly will. Some black Hillary-pledging superdelegates have received death threats from crazy Obama supporters, and that's on the public record.

5. The full truth regarding Larry Sinclair and drug and sex allegations against Obama have not been "settled" yet; far from it.

6. McLaughlin on PBS AND Clarence Page, an Obama supporter, says that Hillary, not Obama, will win Texas and Ohio tomorrow, and they are rarely wrong even against overwhelming odds.

Bottom line; the GOP owned MSM, for whatever reasons you choose to believe depending on your own biases, have crowned Obama a long time ago.

This will not be the first time they will end up with egg all over their faces, and far from the last, because this has nothing to do with news or even business, but purely the political wishes of their GOP corporate owners and who THEY think John McCain can win against.

Finally: polls showed that, before Obama entered the race to divide the Democratic Party into two camps, if Hillary ONLY acheived 51% of all the vote of women in this country in November, she would have utterly decimated ANY POSSIBLE GOP candidate.

All spin aside, it doesn't take a genius to see who the GOP and GOP owned MSM would rather run against, no matter what they say (for they are all liars from the day they are born).

It only takes a realist.

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