We all love someone who can stand up in front of a potentially hostile audience and speak their mind candidly, despite fear of retribution. Some would argue that's exactly what Barack Obama did at his now notorious fundraiser in Pacific Heights, California. But I'm hearing arguments being used to defend his speech that are, in my opinion (call it the "truth" if you're willing to afford me the same generosity afforded to Obama's opinion), completely missing the mark. So I have a few points to raise.
I've been an active participant here for four years and have been relatively quiet as the quantity of illogic has gradually percolated into a bitter brew. Daily Kos has always been a brutally honest champion of "reality-based" viewpoints, so I have a few to share. I may get flamed but I can't remain silent anymore.
February 14, 2008 - Clinton Leads Among Ohio, Pennsylvania Likely Dem Voters, Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Finds; November Matchups Remain Close --- FLORIDA: McCain 44 - Clinton 42; McCain 41 - Obama 39; OHIO Democrats: Clinton 55 - Obama 34; PENNSYLVANIA Democrats: Clinton 52 - Obama 36;
These reasons coupled with the loom of Florida/Michigan return stress the dangers of complacency and over-confidence.
This one goes out to all my ladies and genteel men out there. I'm going to talk about emotionally/psychologically abusive relationships, which are a lot more insidious and in many opinions more damaging than physical abuse. Four years ago, some guy took a swing at me and that was the easiest thing in the world to walk away from with my self-respect intact. The flag doesn't get any more red than that. So what I'm going to discuss here are the pink flags, the not so black-and-white signs that may trigger your instinct that "something's not right here..."
Democrats have been hurt by the inability of their recent presidential candidates to wage competitive campaigns across a vast swath of the country. But the party emerged from this year's vote confident that in 2008, it can compete on a much wider playing field — especially in the West and several states on the fringe of the South.
"If you look at the results from '06, you see a lot of states that Democrats may be able to take ... if they can swing the center the way they did" this year, said Ruy Teixeira, a public opinion analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank.
The article proceeds to describe impressive Democratic gains nationwide, except in the South and in particular...
Why would Bush, after unprecedented and ostentatious appeals for bipartisanship and a happy lunch with Pelosi/Reid, go ahead and nominate Bolton and resubmit for consideration many of the same extremist judges that failed to get through the Senate previously?
With glee I write this from Eastern Pennsylvania. For the third consecutive major electoral cycle (2000, 2004, 2006; I don't consider 2002 major), Republicans have had their smug faces summarily booted out of the Mid-Atlantic region. Once again, their delusional fantasies of pulling some magical upset wins in New Jersey and Maryland came crashing down definitively at the last moment. Do we all remember the cavalier proclamations that New Jersey and even Maryland were "in play" in 2004? But Maryland came out huge against presidential Republican shenanigans that year, giving John Kerry one of his steepest margins of victories in the nation. Last night, significant inroads into minority communities still failed to make any headway for Republicans in this deep blue Mid-Atlantic state. With a less than remarkable candidate, we took it by 10%!
Hey Mark, it's me.
I'm just calling to let you know
that I won't be at your party this Friday.
It's the big audition,
and I've gotta be up by 5 the next morning.
And of course, I'm sure you understand,
and everything,
How important this is to me.
And you know how much I love your parties.
But other than that,
I just hope you have a great time and I'll
catch you later.
Do you remember a time, not so long ago, when you could turn on the radio and hear sophisticated women sharing their serious intimations on hedonism, salvation, child-neglect, self-loathing, and deities walking among us? When pensive females pondered the loss of old-West American chivalry and planted the seeds for endless debate on the definitive identity of the word irony?
Apparently, Harriet Miers was a lot more moderate than I'd ever imagined. (And note I use the term "moderate" where most would use the term "liberal." If it describes the left-end of the political spectrum, "liberal" has to mean something more extreme than support for wealth equality, women's bodily integrity, and LGBT equality, because those values are quite moderate.)
Anyway, I've seen a lot of information that conservatives have found very upsetting about Harriet Miers. This one, however, takes the cake without a doubt.
Let's face it. Election reform is not a bipartisan issue because faulty elections continuously benefit the Republican party. Irrespective of the morality of fair elections, Republicans won't pursue them because they generally won't bite the hand that feeds them. Unless the deficient electoral system actually began to bite them.
Republicans control two of the three biggest swing states, Ohio and Florida. But we run the third, Pennsylvania. Rick Santorum is up for reelection in 2006. I do believe that hiring an avowed Democratic electronic voting machines corporation to handle the votes in exclusively in Lancaster and York counties (two of the largest Republican strongholds in the state) may catalyze bipartisan support for election reform. Until suspicious election equipment bites the Republicans, they have no reason to sign on board for reform. Can this be accomplished?
UPDATE: This diary has been widely misconstrued (see comments below). It uses extreme imagery and terminology to animate my point that the Republican party routinely manipulates ruthless stereotypes about progressives/liberals to further their political goals. My diary is intended to conjure up a scenario where the left uses identical cruelty against the right. Its extreme nature demonstrates how we are desensitized to cruelty against the left but that the right has been comparatively unscathed. It is intended to pique the question of whether this strategy is working for the right and we should go this far.
I know it would have been relatively easy for GOP operatives to perpetrate election fraud, with subtlety and no chance of detection, in Ohio and Florida. And I realize that the results in Florida and Ohio were out of sync with the exit polls of those states. But the exit polls appeared to have oversampled women and they did become more tight as the day wore on. The unfortunate truth is that Kerry performed worse than Al Gore in almost every state in the country. Much as it pains me to acknowledge it, the results in Ohio and Florida were, by and large, consistent with what we would expect there, given the national popular vote trend. That begs the question: was the national popular vote the result of tons of mini-conspiracies?
