Cannot_Wait_4Disney
The Viscount of Vidalia
- Joined
- May 18, 2005
- Messages
- 19,332
Ok, that was just uncalled for.
![]()
Was it? Let me give a shout out to a friend so I can ask him.
HEY KOOL-AID!!!!
Ok, that was just uncalled for.
![]()
Was it? Let me give a shout out to a friend so I can ask him.
HEY KOOL-AID!!!!
Enjoy the blue dress jokes when you're in there.![]()
This is really funny. MY 8-year old DD wanted me to vote for Obama! I brought her to both rallies here in Madison, so I asked her why. She said it was because Barack's speech was shorter.
I heard an interesting take on the Florida situation on the Randi Rhodes show this afternoon. Not only is Florida's legislature overwhelmingly Republican, but Florida's governor is Republican too. Florida's Republican led legislature decided to move the primary date forward. It was tied to adding a paper trail to the electronic voting machines and the Democrats felt they needed to vote for the bill which included both. Any attempts to change the date back to a February date were voted down by the Republicans. I that the Republicans were well aware of what might happen if they moved the Democratic primary ahead and the Democrats really had no choice.
Personally, I want a re-do for both states and that the DNC review the whole primary process.
I have said repeatedly that I will vote for him if he gets the nomination. Something really horrible would have to come out about him to make me turn to the Republican ticket. And even then I'd have to think really hard.
Nothing against McCain. I think he's a good enough person and a war hero...but as I've said before, I don't vote for people because I might like them. I don't like his stand on issues and I don't care for the company he keeps. He scares me. Especially with the 100 years and the "bomb Iran" thing. Besides, I can't imagine voting for a Republican right now. He'd be naming Supreme Court Justices, etc. Huh-uh.![]()
Having said that, some of the comments from some of Obama's followers have made me feel like I may have to hold my nose if I have to cast that vote. Not because of Obama himself, but the way his people have talked to me. I have the right to make my choice and I'm not stupid. It's a whole new level of mudslinging and that's just my honest opinion. I'm sick of the "we need to pull our party together" when what many of them really mean is Hillary's people need to roll over and play dead. I can just hear the roars of protest if we suggested the same thing. It's felt very one-sided and I'm tired of it. I can't help but think a lot of it is sexism.
Let me add....not ALL of Obama's followers have made me feel this way. And it has NOTHING to do with him, but what other Democrats have said to me. It's just not necessary. I can't see why we can't remain civil. We are on the same side.
I am 100% dead set against another caucus. Those ought to be eliminated completely. Does anybody doubt after Texas that a caucus does not represent the will of the people? Does anybody doubt after Washington a caucus does not represent the will of the people? Look at the total skew.
I don't care which candidate you're for, there simply isn't any doubt about that now. A caucus does not represent the will of the voters and as such, it is anti-Democratic, and anti-American
I think part of it is that for years now we've heard talk about Hillary being the "woman we love to hate". The Republicans have talked bad about her ... called her things I'm not going to type because I don't want points ... she's an ice queen, she's a man-hater, she's only sticking with Bill because he'll further her career, etc. We're used to hearing negative things linked with her name.
Obama is the new kid on the block and he's articulate and "young" and he fires people up. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm trying to say here, but he's black. It's less acceptable to say anything negative about an African American than a woman in our country. It just is.
I think people hear things said about Obama as attacks and things said agains Hillary as normal criticism. It's not. It's just sexism instead of racism in my way of looking at things.
Inside US poll battle as fight turns dirty for Democrats
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By GERRI PEEV
HILLARY Clinton has been branded a "monster" by one of Barack Obama's top advisers, as the gloves come off in the race to win the Democrat nomination.
In an unguarded moment during an interview with The Scotsman, Samantha Power, his key foreign policy aide, let slip the camp's true feelings about the former First Lady.
Her comments came as Mr Obama, whose defeats in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday were largely put down to a series of negative attacks on him, vowed to turn up the heat on Mrs Clinton over her claims to be the more experienced candidate.
The fragile truce was blown apart as the pressure for the nomination intensified, with Mrs Clinton winning in Texas and Ohio.
Ms Power told The Scotsman Mrs Clinton was stopping at nothing to try to seize the lead from Mr Obama.
"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
"She is a monster, too that is off the record she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.
"Interestingly, the people in her innermost circle seem to not mind her; I think they really love her."
But she added: "There is this middle circle they are really on the warpath. But the truth is she has proved herself really willing to stoop."
In recent TV appearances Mrs Clinton had looked desperate and on the back foot.
Ms Power agreed, and said: "Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there too.
"You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
Ms Power's comments reveal how the inexperienced Obama campaign is coming under increasing pressure from a battle-hardened Clinton camp that saw Ohio as its last chance to save its candidate.
Earlier in the week, the press and the Clinton camp seized on remarks by Austan Goolsbee, Ms Power's colleague, on the North America Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). His comments are widely believed to have cost the Mr Obama the Ohio Democratic presidential primary.
Mr Goolsbee, Mr Obama's top economic policy adviser, had told Canadian officials that a public pledge to force a renegotiation of Nafta with tougher labour and environmental rules was "more about political positioning".
But the Clinton camp said Mr Obama could tell the public one thing and then tell a foreign government something else behind closed doors.
Ms Power knew the consequences of the gaffe made by her friend. She said: "Now Hillary is using it to say that Obama's not serious about Nafta. Oh God, it's so sad."
Mr Obama yesterday blamed fierce attacks by Mrs Clinton for his defeats in this week's big primaries, and quickly made good on a promise to sharpen his criticism of her in what promises to become an all-out brawl in the race for the White House.
The Illinois senator took the offensive against Mrs Clinton, targeting her claims that she is more experienced in handling foreign policy. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no," he said. "She made a series of arguments on why she should be a superior candidate. I think it's important to examine that argument."
In recent days, the former First Lady has argued Mr Obama was getting a free ride with the media, questioned his sincerity in opposing Nafta and darkly hinted he was not ready to be commander in chief in a crisis.
Mrs Clinton, asked about her national security qualifications, ticked off a series of events in which she had played a role, including peace talks in Northern Ireland, the Kosovo refugee crisis and standing up for women's rights in China. She also cited her work on the Senate armed services committee.
Obama aides took the offensive yesterday, holding a conference call to ask why Clinton had not released her tax returns. Her campaign responded with a statement e-mailed to reporters while they were on the Obama call that said the Clintons' returns since they left the White House would be made public around 15 April.
"There's no doubt that Senator Clinton went very negative over the last week," Mr Obama said. He said the Clinton campaign's multiple attacks "had some impact" on the election results, "particularly in the context where many of you in the press corps had been persuaded that you had been too hard on her and too soft on me".
Ms Power insisted Mr Obama was well equipped to deal with foreign policy. She said his perceived willingness to befriend dictators and rogue leaders was him simply trying a different approach, as the current foreign policy has not worked.
She said: "Hillary Clinton always portrays his position on meeting with dictators as naive. She is almost implying what he is saying is he wants to meet with dictators without preparations. It is not like he would sit down with Ahmadinejad and say, 'Hey Ahmadinejad, I have been meaning to talk to you. How 'bout those New York Giants?'
"If we have had the same policy for decades and it is not working, why are we sticking to the same policy?
"Can we at least try to re-jig the equation here? Principles should not be checked at the door when one is meeting with dictators. But seeking to at least have dialogue would give the United States more kudos in the non-western world, allowing others to see that perhaps it was not all America's fault.
"There is something tougher about being in the room with Ahmadinejad and making your position known rather than lobbing your verbal grenades from 5,000 miles away, which is what the Bush administration has done."
She added: "It is important that negotiations don't become an end in itself. It is the Chamberlain problem."
Ms Power was in the UK to promote her book on Sergio Vieira de Mello, the extraordinary UN representative who was blown up in Baghdad.
PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED
WHEN is off the record actually off the record? When the rules are established in advance.
Journalists are always looking for knowledge and want the information they receive to be available for publication.
But occasionally an interviewer will accept an exchange is "off the record" and that the conversation is not attributable. Remarks can be used as background to inform a journalist's article.
If a conversation is to be off the record, that agreement is usually thrashed out before the interview begins. Sometimes, public figures say something and then attempt to retract it by insisting it was "off the record" after the event.
But by then it is too late, particularly if it is in the public interest that the story be published.
In this instance, Samantha Power was promoting her book and it was established in advance that the interview was on the record.
A WOMAN OF POWER
SAMANTHA Power is the embodiment of the American immigrant dream.
Born in Dublin in 1970, she moved to the United States with her mother aged nine.
After being educated in state schools in Pittsburgh and Georgia, she gained entry to the prestigious Yale University, where she studied history. The self-depre
cating Ms Power said this changed her life and opened many doors.
She worked as freelance journalist in Bosnia, after teaching herself the language in Croatia. Her only other journalism experience prior to that was covering the Yale women's volleyball team.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, she became an executive director and founder of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard.
The 37-year-old already has one Pulitzer Prize behind her, for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide and she is in the UK and Ireland to plug her new book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.
Ms Power was head-hunted by Barack Obama to become his foreign-policy adviser in 2005 and combines this role with her job as a Time magazine columnist and professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard.
This is so true - and I hope those states that held them this year, and couldn't meet up with the demand - change to primaries.......
I am still flabbergasted at Texas - Hillary wins the legitimate vote - then Obama could possibly win the "my supporters can go out again at night and vote again" vote? Surreal......
I think I read that they are still counting the results of the TX caucuses.....
Contrast that with a New Jerseyan experience? Voted before work - watch the returns on TV after work. So much simpler!!![]()
I am still flabbergasted at Texas - Hillary wins the legitimate vote - then Obama could possibly win the "my supporters can go out again at night and vote again" vote? Surreal.....
Totally surreal. Let's just have a vote, and then when a great number of families with jobs and children have to go to bed, let's just allow some people to have another vote that totally overturns the first one. Some of those things ended up held in parking lots and some of em after midnight. But it totally illustrates why we ought to do away with a caucus. There really should be no doubt now.
Totally surreal. Let's just have a vote, and then when a great number of families with jobs and children have to go to bed, let's just allow some people to have another vote that totally overturns the first one. Some of those things ended up held in parking lots and some of em after midnight. But it totally illustrates why we ought to do away with a caucus. There really should be no doubt now.
There were plenty of people with jobs and children who attended the caucuses. And plenty of caucuses that went just fine.
The media would have you think that every caucus in Texas was a disaster and that any Hillary supporters were shot on the spot and their bodies tossed in dumpsters but speaking as someone who lives in Texas and spoke with multiple people who attended (different) caucuses, those reports are exaggerated.
Hey...I've heard a lot worse reasons for voting for someone! Sharp kid ya' got there.
I'm done arguing with you, GotDisney. Again, you get "upset" about attacks on Hillary. We get "upset" about attacks on US. I'm sorry that you can't see the difference there, but I'm done arguing with you about it.
I think part of it is that for years now we've heard talk about Hillary being the "woman we love to hate". The Republicans have talked bad about her ... called her things I'm not going to type because I don't want points ... she's an ice queen, she's a man-hater, she's only sticking with Bill because he'll further her career, etc. We're used to hearing negative things linked with her name.
Obama is the new kid on the block and he's articulate and "young" and he fires people up. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm trying to say here, but he's black. It's less acceptable to say anything negative about an African American than a woman in our country. It just is.
I think people hear things said about Obama as attacks and things said against Hillary as normal criticism. It's not. It's just sexism instead of racism in my way of looking at things.
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There were plenty of people with jobs and children who attended the caucuses. And plenty of caucuses that went just fine.
The media would have you think that every caucus in Texas was a disaster and that any Hillary supporters were shot on the spot and their bodies tossed in dumpsters but speaking as someone who lives in Texas and spoke with multiple people who attended (different) caucuses, those reports are exaggerated.
Ours went fine, but it doesn't change the fact that Caucuses are skewed towards folks who can stay up late & are wired. If also defeats the purpose of early voting.
& fwiw, i asked many people (including on this thread) if i could take my kid to the caucus & no one offered an answer. (so my wife stayed home with the kid).
& a voter who attended a caucus had a vote that was worth 3 times what a regular voter was....& if it was in a "super octane" state senate district, it was worth maybe 4-5 times what my 87 y/o mother's vote was worth.
Caucuses are a crock.
She didn't. An aide did.