"how about conducting American foreign policy in a way that doesn't make enemies ?"

i asked that question at the lunch table at an electronics R&D lab in So Cal, a day or 2 after 9-11.

interesting how the MSM has labelled her "cackle". i watched as much as i could take, about 2 minutes. that's not a cackle, that's a forced laugh, typical of the desperation & false heartiness of corporate America.

but the cackle makes it look like the media is picking on her - which makes it look like there's a debate.

bread & circuses.

quote:

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Originally posted by quelar:
Go with Kucinich. Although I'd love to see Ron Paul win so he puts the final nails in the coffin of the American empire, he's also racist, sexist, and a complete nutcase.

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:

What did Ron Paul say that was sexist or racist ?

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He's been rabidly anti-immigrant, which is a racist stance given that the overwhelming majority of immigrants to the U.S. are of Hispanic origin.

About blacks in Washington, D.C., Paul wrote, "I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:
I'm sticking with Obama...

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http://www.yahoo.com/s/709012

I like Dennis better than Hillary. I think Obama is also better than Hillary. Anyone who needs so much money to campaign is corrupted though so I don't like any of them except Dennis.

[ 16 October 2007: Message edited by: babblerwannabe ]

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:
I could accept Obama or Kucinich for the Democrats and I imagine Giuliani or Ron Paul are the best that the Republicans are offering up this time. Still a good chance I'll vote 3rd Party though. But, the Bush/Clinton era MUST come to an end.

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Stop playing THEIR game. Take back control. Take back YOUR nation. Time to boycott voting. This strategy is consistent with the thinking of Gandhi and King: peaceful resistance to political tyranny that can bring the corrupt system to its knees. Ultimately, the most effective protest is through civil disobedience -- to visibly and stubbornly refuse to respect what has become a corrupt, untrustworthy system. Before it can be fixed it must be deconstructed and then rebuilt. Taxation with MISrepresentation means we need a Second American Revolution; it must begin -- not with violent action -- but with massive withdrawal by citizens that have seen the light. We have a good head start with about half of eligible voters already so turned off that they don't vote. Obviously that has not been sufficient to change the system.
….

Voting in a delusional representative democracy is as harebrained as voting even though you know votes will not be honestly counted -- which many fear may be true. We may have lost control of our government, but we still control our voting. Time to walk away from the brainwashing and fiction that it really matters which Democrat or Republican you vote for in primaries and general elections for federal office. Power elites want us to believe that. They collude with the corporate mainstream media that make tons of money from campaigns and want you to stay glued to suspenseful horse races. Loud-mouth political pundits that narrate the races are democracy's enemies. We must stop watching and listening to the political entertainment designed to keep us obediently mesmerized, as if the game is honest. Without an audience, these phony races and media circus will disappear.

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:

John Edwards?

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As a Senator, Edwards voted to authorize the war in Iraq. As a matter of principle I will NOT vote for ANY candidate that was foolish enough to vote for that.

[ 16 October 2007: Message edited by: I AM WOMAN ]

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
I wonder if Ralph Nader plans to run again.

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:

As a Senator, Edwards voted to authorize the war in Iraq. As a matter of principle I will NOT vote for ANY candidate that was foolish enough to vote for that.

[ 16 October 2007: Message edited by: I AM WOMAN ]

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He was wrong, and clearly admitted he was wrong. Don't forget that in Vietnam, anti-war candidates in 1968, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy had initially voted for or supported the war.

As for Clinton, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. She's just like her husband.

[ 17 October 2007: Message edited by: josh ]

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
I wonder if Ralph Nader plans to run again.

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He may be waiting to see who gets the Democratic nomination. There is also talk that former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney might run for the Greens.

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Originally posted by josh:

He may be waiting to see who gets the Democratic nomination. There is also talk that former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney might run for the Greens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_McKinney

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Originally posted by Geneva:

if both she and Ron Paul run, there would be nut candidates at both ends of the spectrum

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That would be GREAT for the american system. That way they can syphon votes from both sides, and hurt both parties, instead of just one party, which in the past has only been used to accuse those voting on the 'fringe' of voting the opposite party in.

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Originally posted by josh:
He was wrong, and clearly admitted he was wrong. Don't forget that in Vietnam, anti-war candidates in 1968, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy had initially voted for or supported the war.

As for Clinton, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. She's just like her husband.

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Originally posted by Geneva:

if both she and Ron Paul run, there would be nut candidates at both ends of the spectrum

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As opposed to the nut candidates in the "middle" of the spectrum who start wars because they think they're doing the work of God, or because the "end times" are upon us?

[ 17 October 2007: Message edited by: josh ]

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:

Well, I don't want a President that can be THAT wrong on the biggest foreign policy blunder in a generation. And RFK! It was him & his brother (with a little help from LBJ) that got us into Vietnam in the first place. The Kennedy's, Bush's & Clinton's have been a total disaster for America. It's time for ALL of them to just leave the public stage....forever!

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Originally posted by josh:
He may be waiting to see who gets the Democratic nomination.

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:
The Kennedys, Clintons & Bush's are all corrupt. I make little distinction between any of them.

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Originally posted by babblerwannabe:
Ron Paul appears to be an extreamist. I can't believe that Obama is related to Cheney.

http://www.yahoo.com/s/709012

I like Dennis better than Hillary. I think Obama is also better than Hillary. Anyone who needs so much money to campaign is corrupted though so I don't like any of them except Dennis.

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I don't think there's a problem with candidates raking in so much money considering the fact that they're going to need that money to get elected. I think the problem is with the American electoral system that requires so much money to get elected in the first place. It would be nice if the US had real public financing laws, but until they do candidates will need to remain competitive. Where the real problem lies is where the money comes from. As you can see by that link at least Obama and Edwards are, of the top three candidates, significantly financed by smaller donations. Clinton is significantly more reliant on larger donations.

[ 18 October 2007: Message edited by: babblerwannabe ]

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Originally posted by babblerwannabe:
Was Obama even a politician when they voted for the war in 2003?

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Senator Obama said that it was wrong in its conception

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Not "it was a criminal act, the supreme war crime", or "it was an act of terror", or "it is genocide against the Iraqi people that rivals the events in Sudan and Rwanda". Nope. it was the conception that was wrong. Like when you're moving, and you bring your sofa through the wrong door that's too small and it gets stuck. Bad planning.

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Obama has a plan to immediately begin withdrawing our troops engaged in combat operations(*note he doesn't say anything about permanent bases or the enormous embassy) at a pace of one or two brigades every month, to be completed by the end of next year. He would call for a new constitutional convention in Iraq, convened with the United Nations, which would not adjourn until Iraq's leaders reach a new accord on reconciliation. He would use presidential leadership to surge our diplomacy with all of the nations of the region on behalf of a new regional security compact. And he would take immediate steps to confront the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Iraq.

The goal of the surge was to create space for Iraq's political leaders to reach an agreement to end Iraq's civil war. At great cost, our troops have helped reduce violence in some areas of Iraq, but even those reductions do not get us below the unsustainable levels of violence of mid-2006. Moreover, Iraq's political leaders have made no progress in resolving the political differences at the heart of their civil war.

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Typical slime that passes for "left" discourse in the U.S. First, protect the bases, then fob the security off on the UN (so they can be blamed for the failure), then nonsense about a "regional security compact", which is code for "protect Israel, isolate Iran".

And, at the end, he blames the Iraqis themselves. America tried its best, but those uncivilized tribes refuse to help themselves.

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Obama rejects the notion that the American moment has passed and believes that America must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission. Obama believes that America must lead the world, by deed and example, and that America cannot meet the threats of the century alone and that the world cannot meet them without America.

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He cannot make his Amero-supremecy any clearer.

To sum up, Obama is just another corrupt weasle Democrat, whose main goal is raising money and protecting the national security state apparatus.

[ 19 October 2007: Message edited by: Jingles ]

I don't "like" any of them. I don't "trust" any of them. The whole thing's scary - the nutjobs in politics down there in the US make our nutjobs up here look like moderate lightweights.

The only one with experience in the White House is Hilary Clinton. Will she make a good President? Who knows? Does anyone know what a good President of the US looks like? Barak Obama doesn't have the experience to do the job without being kicked to the ground before he even gets started. He'd be better off taking a senior post in the next administration, getting a good feel for that level of federal politics, and make a run for leadership next go round.

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Originally posted by Rebecca West:
The only one with experience in the White House is Hillary Clinton.

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She's very much had the experience of being the newby and being knocked down for it already.

Did she learn anything from it? When the cigar really hit the fan for Bill Clinton-- and remember the deer in the headlights look on his face-- it was Hillary that circled the wagons, did the damage control and plotted a course out from his colossal screw up.

As far as political skills go, there's none in the running that couldn't take lessons from Hillary Clinton. And few that are even qualified to carry her lunch bag.

[ 19 October 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:

When the cigar really hit the fan for Bill Clinton-- and remember the deer in the headlights look on his face-- it was Hillary that circled the wagons, did the damage control and plotted a course out from his colossal screw up.

As far as political skills go, there's none in the running that couldn't take lessons from Hillary Clinton. And few that are even qualified to carry her lunch bag.

[ 19 October 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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Plotted a course out from his colossal screw up ?

Good Grief! He was impeached! I'd hardly call that effective "damage control"

As for the rest, you may be right. But I think the Democratic party in the States has never really been much different from the Liberals here. Campaign from the left, rule from the right. I don't think the Clinton's brought anything new that way, although they probably looked that way due to the whole political discourse being dragged to the far right in the States.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Actually, slick Willie wasn't impeached. Articles of impeachment were brought against him, and the vote failed.

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:

Hillary Clinton's arrogance in 1993/94 caused the Democrats to lose control of the Congress for the first time in 40 years. Her "political skills" are a total disaster. All the Clinton's have done is help turn the Democratic Party into the Republican Party. The Clintons supported (and signed) NAFTA, signed DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), signed Don't Ask/Don't Tell, voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, and supported an amendment to the Constitution to make a "flag burning" a Federal crime. Why the Democrats are hell bent of nominating another corporate globalist without a chance of winning is beyond me. Half the country has already decided that they hate her guts.

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You can add her years of service to Wal-Mart. And she's continuing her husband's obsession with raising money, from anyone and everyone:

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Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury.

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When Ms Clinton had a coughing fit during a speech in New Orleans last summer, Drudge reacted with genuine concern, telling listeners to his Miami radio show: "Hillary dear, take care of yourself. We need you," according to New York magazine. On another occasion, he confessed: "I need Hillary Clinton. I need to be part of her world. That's my bank."
Yesterday, it emerged that the caring went two ways. The New York Times reported that the Clinton campaign had grown adept at using the Drudge Report to leak news that could steal the thunder from rivals, or to solidify her position as the frontrunner for the Democratic party's presidential nomination for next year.

Earlier this month, Ms Clinton's staff leaked campaign fundraising data to the website just as her rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, was to deliver a policy speech on Iraq - and a crucial 20 minutes before the official release of the information. The story on Ms Clinton's fundraising prowess dominated the news cycle.

The New York Times reported that the Clinton campaign had opened a direct line of communication to Drudge through a former Democratic national committee official, Tracey Sefl. Ms Sefl refused to comment yesterday, but the revelation was widely seen as a sign of Drudge's importance in the US media, despite his reclusive nature and a history of getting some stories spectacularly wrong.

The Drudge Report's influence goes beyond its average readership - the site claims 422 million log-ons in the past month - with television and radio producers scouring the site for potential scoops.

Some would argue that Ms Clinton owes her political career to Drudge. In 1998, the humiliation of her husband's affair with the White House intern led to an outpouring of sympathy for the first lady. Her approval ratings soared, the image of the calculating political spouse blurred. The idea of running for the Senate, which Ms Clinton had been pondering, seemed less of a long shot. She launched her campaign early the next year.

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Hillary Rodham arrived at Yale in the fall of 1969 with her reputation preceding her. As one of only 27 women in a class of 235, she would have stood out anyway. But the prior spring, she had delivered her famous commencement speech at Wellesley, where she’d been student-body president, upbraiding the Republican senator Edward Brooke—a speech that made her, in the eyes of the media, a de facto spokeswoman for her generation and landed her picture in Life magazine. “Hillary Rodham was a star,” the film pundit Michael Medved, a law-school classmate of hers, has written. “Everyone knew about her speech and talked in reverential tones about the extraordinary wisdom and eloquence that her address had displayed.”

Hillary thrust herself squarely into the hurly-burly. She made fast friends with Medved and other antiwar activists in their class. Rather than joining the mainstream Yale Law Journal, she became an editor of a new alternative publication, The Yale Review of Law and Social Action, which was sympathetic to the Panthers. (To accompany pieces about the trial, it ran artwork depicting policemen as rifle-toting pigs, with thought bubbles over their heads that read “Niggers, niggers, niggers.”) She was among the student-observers who attended the trial to monitor it for civil-rights abuses and report back to the ACLU. There she met the radical lawyer Robert Treuhaft, for whom she would spend a summer working in Northern California. Hillary wanted “to work for a left-wing movement law firm,” Treuhaft later explained. “Anyone who went to college or law school would have known our law firm was a communist law firm.”

Many years after, conservatives would seize on all this as proof that Hillary was a pedal-to-the-metal radical at Yale. And Clinton’s lack of forthrightness about this slice of her history has only lent credence to the caricature. In her autobiography, Living History, she mentions the Panther trial only en passant and has maintained total silence about it elsewhere. Meanwhile, her description of Treuhaft’s militant outfit is comically innocuous: “a small law firm in Oakland.”

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It all starts, if you think about it, on Inauguration Day. Would Bill Clinton hold the Bible for his wife? It’d be a lovely tableau, but fraught with ambiguous symbolism—is this another twofer? A passing of the torch? An unfortunate reminder she wouldn’t be there without him? (None of these ideas is something the first female president of the United States would want to communicate to all posterity.) The questions would continue with the festivities: How are the two Clintons introduced? As the Former and Mrs. President Clinton? Mr. and Mrs. Presidents Clinton? President Clinton and Mr. Clinton?

Ask Hillary’s staff, and they’ll tell you they haven’t gotten around to thinking about questions of pageantry and protocol, though one aide admits they’re already trying to determine whether she’d be Mrs. or Madam President, which is complicated enough. But every Washington insider eventually wonders aloud about these niceties. And, vastly more important, what he would do all day. Presumably, Bill Clinton would not kick off the White House Easter-egg roll. He wouldn’t obsess over Christmas-tree decorations. The only traditional First Lady responsibility one could really envision him embracing would be the state dinners—not the menus themselves (unless the chef could be persuaded to do cheeseburgers, or takeout Chinese) but the hosting part, the part that involves schmoozing and storytelling and the subtle diplomacy of the seating chart. “Maybe the press won’t cover what’s on the menu, finally,” says a former Clinton-administration official. “It’ll be more like what the actual discussions were at the dinner tables.”

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Imagine that! But this is interesting too - the writer draws attention to the fact that Bill Clinton is actually performing a much mroe "traditional First Lady" role right now than Hillary ever did, and moreso than the other candidates' wives:

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One could even go as far as to say that Bill Clinton is already leading the life of an ideal First Lady. His foundation focuses on just the type of causes associated with presidents’ wives—fighting childhood obesity, urban renewal, stemming the spread of poverty and aids—and his most recent book, Giving, about the virtues and pleasures of philanthropy, is a First Lady topic if ever there was one. Certainly, as a candidate’s spouse, Bill is doing a better job at lending a traditional feel to Hillary’s campaign than she ever did to his (or Judith does to Rudolph Giuliani’s, for that matter, or Elizabeth Edwards does to John’s, or Michelle Obama does to Barack’s). Like campaign wives of yore, his approval ratings are considerably higher than hers, and one of his many functions on the trail is to blunt her corrugated edges. In his afterlife, Bill Clinton has become nonpolarizing, almost benign; if you look at recent photographs, you’ll notice he’s almost always off to the side, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted in the traditional posture of feminine fascination, looking on as someone else speaks.

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[ 23 October 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

.

[ 23 October 2007: Message edited by: Geneva ]

quote:

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Originally posted by I AM WOMAN:
I don't think we'll have to worry about another Clinton Presidency as there is no way she will ever be elected. The Democratic Party establishment is driving right off a cliff and the only ones that seem to notice this is the progressive wing of the party.

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Here's an example of the sort of thing that makes you wonder: On Thursday, ABC News reported on its Web site that the Clinton campaign is holding a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch and campaign briefing - at the offices of the Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group, which lobbies for the agribusiness and biotech giant Monsanto. You don't have to be a Naderite to feel uncomfortable about the implied closeness.

I'd put it this way: Many progressives, myself included, hope that the next president will be another FDR. But we worry that he or she will turn out to be another Grover Cleveland instead - better intentioned and much more competent than the current occupant of the White House, but too dependent on lobbyists' money to seriously confront the excesses of our new Gilded Age.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Geez. It gets worse and worse, doesn't it? Of course, they're all owned by large corporations, I guess. But you wouldn't think that would be the way to connect with rural voters.

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And why bother, for that matter. There are more people playing World of Warcraft than farming in the USA. Yet for some reason USians have a fixation on checked skirts and farmhouses.

quote:

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Originally posted by arborman:
while feeling smug about their superiority to the urbanites who outnumber them by such a large margin. I'm personally sick of it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by arborman:

The wierdest part is, rural voters almost uniformly vote against their interests (here in Canada too).

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Originally posted by timmah:

Yeah...I can't imagine why they would feel a disconnect from their counterparts in urban centres...

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Ye Gods, the ultimate bulletin board trump card. The rolly eyes of disdain! I will never recover.

Of course they feel a disconnect - they live different lives. I grew up rural, but like the overwhelming majority of people have moved to the city (because that is where the 'employment' was, at least for me).

Canada is a bit different, but the US has developed a long standing tradition of rural voters electing right wing tax cutters, who then divert massive pork (paid for with urban taxes) to the rural states. A twisted dysfunction that stems from the Senate and its 2 seats per state rule. Or did you think all those massive military bases that exist in backwater red states with no domestic economy to speak of were put there for military reasons?

And then the 'real' people, the rural folk, sniff their noses at those uppity urbanites who deign to subsidize their states so much. The flow of tax money through expenditures is strongly blue to red, though you'd never know it listening to the endless blathering about rural values and rugged individualism.

[ 23 October 2007: Message edited by: I AM WOMAN ]

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All polls show that Hillary Clinton is far in the lead for the Democratic presidential nomination and Rudy Giuliani is far in the lead for the Republican nomination.

These are the only two candidates guaranteed to be worse than Bush/Cheney.

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One would have to say Clinton is still the favourite for the Democratic nomination. She's simply got too much money and too much of the establishment behind her, but Edwards or Obama could easily surprise with wins in the early primary states. The rest are all out of it.