No kidding.

I help my parents out with computer issues. Neither Mom nor Dad feels comfortable doing anything beyond reading email or playing Spider solitaire on the dreaded box, so I am called in when help is needed.

My mom showed me this email, forwarded to her from my Aunt, who got it from someone else in a long chain. There is no source given for the original content, which I am posting below the fold, but I think it may give you pause. It certainly made me queasy.

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UPDATE: People didn't get this diary, so I took it down. Not worth it.                                                                                .

done.

Ok.

Early on in Obama's campaign, I saw some interviews with black Americans who said something like: "Yeah, white people think they want to vote for this man, and get over the color divide, but they don't really know what it is", and I am ashamed to say, I dismissed those comments. I thought, surely, people do know what we're getting into here. People are finally truly aware of the gulf that divides the experience of many, more like most, black people with that of whites. I was wrong.

I have watched the firestorm over the Reverend Wright and his comments about "Goddamn America" and all, and I see people who are shocked by it. Imagine! A black preacher talking about social injustice from a pulpit! Surely that's NEVER happened before. And the language he uses, his stance as a modern day prophet in the mold of Jeremiah, WOW, where'd he come up with that?

No. WHERE HAVE YOU ALL BEEN? I'm white, never been a member of a black church, but I am somewhat familiar with the rhetorical style that is typical in many black churches. The Rev. Wright isn't going outside this in the least!

Who does that sound like?

I'll give you three guesses . . .

(ok, virtual guesses, and some of you got it, congrats . . . but just to clarify:)

Yup, it's our friends in the Clinton Campaign. Not satisfied with all the other campaign shenanigans coming out of Clinton Country, now some of her major donors, especially from Florida, are pressuring the party to play their way, or give their money back. NYT article

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CAVEAT: I am not saying that I have done an indepth, statistical analysis of the coverage provided on NPR, but I have noted a bias, and, in a related thread (excerpt here) I found that there were some other people who seemed to be seeing the same thing.

Is NPR biased? Not in such an obvious way as outlets like Faux News, but it's use of language and it's choice of emphasis, for which it has been rightfully respected, demonstrates a troubling lack of impartiality. Nb - I am referring in this diary to the published transcripts available on the NPR website.

(examples after the fold)

It's probably fair to say that many of us look at the current system with a mixture of "wtf?" and anger, and it's not surprising. If there is anything this particular round of primaries has taught us, it is how many ways the process, supposedly designed to reveal the will of the party's electorate, can be skewed and manipulated. As Otis Redding says, "A change has gotta come."

It also seems that a lot of folks want the emphasis placed back on the will of voters. There's a lot of talk out there that seems to hint at a purely popular vote strategy. As thinking folks, though, we know this might not always serve our best interests, especially if, like in this time 'round, we have a close race, SO  . . .

Allow me to float a trial balloon: Primaries in which the popular vote is collected along with a runoff choice. (I am aware that runoff elections have their own problems, so I am open to tweaking that.) At the convention, we first consider the first person listed on the popular vote ONLY. Do we have a winner? Bingo! No, ok . . add in the runner up votes, together with the first place votes (in some sort of proportion): winner? Yeah! No? Ok, THEN go to a delegate system.

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