Any politician who runs on the campaign message: "Don't get your hopes up" deserves to fai
Any politician who runs on the campaign message: "Don't get your hopes up" deserves to fail.
--------------------------------------------
As many people seem to be born either liberal or conservative, so many also seem naturally inclined toward either idealism or pragmatism. Overly simplified, the pragmatist says "tell me how the system works and I'll do my best within it," and the idealist says, "let's change the system."
Though this dichotomy doesn't seem to work very well in Republican party politics (where those claiming idealism invade foreign countries), it plays a striking role in the Democratic party. In modern times Democrats find themselves choosing between an idealistic candidate, usually younger, and a pragmatic candidate, usually more seasoned in Washington politics.
This year this pattern is compounded by the idealist being African-American and the pragmatist being a woman. This startling dual breakthrough has blurred the idealist-pragmatist choice to a large degree. But it is a powerful choice none the less.
Pragmatists rarely campaign as pragmatists because who can get excited about someone who says, "I know what the deal is and I am prepared to work within the deal"? Rather, a pragmatist candidate campaigns on themes of experience, toughness, and scars of battle. Idealistic candidates have a different, some would say dreamy or unrealistic, view. The idealist says, "we've tried the old ways and they are not working." The idealist campaigns on themes of new voices, new ideas, and new leadership, that is to say a break with the past, with tradition, with conventional wisdom, and with an old and often corrupted system.
There is a strong strain of idealism even in a 220 year-old nation. It is based on hope and longing for something better. But it is also based on practical (possibly pragmatic) reasons. Power corrupts. Those accustomed to working within a system soon find it increasingly easy to game the system, to favor friends, to place personal interest above the national interest. Hence, Jefferson's radical notion of generational revolution: saddling a person with the practices and policies of the past, he argued, is like asking a man to wear the coat he wore as a boy.
Though most people who start out as young idealists become more pragmatic with the weight of years, some of us do not. Some of us cling to the hope that America can do better, that public service can be noble, that equality and justice are achievable. We don't want to settle for past policy frameworks or for half measures. We would prefer to set a higher standard and to challenge the political and social systems to struggle upward. These feelings are not voluntary. They are part of one's very character.
I hope to live to see the first woman president. But I also hope she will be an idealist, not only a gender pioneer but a bold, brave, and innovative leader who is not part of a flawed Washington system. I want America to send a powerful signal to a watching world that we have now taken a giant step into the global culture by electing an African-American. But my hope and dream also is, and has been since the days of John and Robert Kennedy, that this president will call us to a nobler mission and a higher goal, that he will remind us always of our Constitutional principles and ideals, that he will place us back on our historic path to the establishment of a more perfect union and a principled republic.
Ever an idealist, I therefore place my hope in Barack Obama. It is time for the idealists, even the aging ones, to raise the flag again.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/the-perserverance-of -idea_b_104560.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 2 months ago
Views: 1,038
Presidents and Experience: A Myth?
Added: 2 months ago
Views: 281
Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally written the obituary for the Iowa and New Hampshi
Hillary Clinton may have unintentionally written the obituary for the Iowa and New Hampshire phase of her presidential campaign, and perhaps her candidacy, when she told voters on Sunday: "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose."
Clinton has not heeded her own lesson. She is campaigning in prose and has left the poetry to Barack Obama. She has answers to hard policy questions but he has the one answer that voters are hungering for: He offers himself as the vehicle for creating a new political movement that will break the country out of a sour, reactionary political era.
The most telling laugh line in Obama's stump speech is his description of the dreadful charge his opponents make against him. "Obama's talking about hope again," the candidate says, mimicking his foes. Then his tenor drops to a low, conspiratorial pitch: "He's a hope monger." His audiences roar. There is a certain melancholy in watching Clinton do battle, aware that the bottom is falling out from under her here. By way of proving her tenacity and the depth of her policy knowledge, she subjects herself to unremitting rounds of questions from voters about every issue from health care to global warming.
Yet if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably to John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.'" At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes. It is no accident that the two best preachers on the trail, Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee, broke through in Iowa -- even if Huckabee's prospects here and in the long run are dimmer than Obama's. And it has to be painful for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who saw themselves 16 years ago as the heirs to John and Robert Kennedy, to watch Obama march off as the champion of a vast band of young and practical idealists.
The Clinton campaign is rooted in the idea that "Experience Counts" -- ironically enough, Richard Nixon's slogan against John Kennedy in 1960. But it is Obama who may have precisely the right experience for the mood of the moment. As a community organizer early in his professional life, Obama understood his task as catalyzing citizens into building movements for change. Obama's speeches are about citizen action, assembling coalitions, forcing change through popular demand. "I'm betting on you," Obama told a rapturous audience in Derry on Sunday afternoon. "I don't believe change comes from the top down. It comes from the bottom up." Change will come "if you believe," Obama declares, an inspiring line for this state's many Red Sox fans.
"When you've got a working majority behind you," he says at another point, "you can't be stopped." Transformation is not about policy details, but about altering the political and social calculus. Obama presents himself, in one of Karl Rove's favorite phrases, as a game-changer. If Obama seems to have history's winds at his back, Clinton is carrying history's burdens. In trying to push her way back into the contest by Feb. 5, when nearly two dozen states vote, Clinton would have to press her sober case that as good as Obama sounds, she's the one who is vetted and tested. "If you want to know which kind of change we will make," she pleaded to her Sunday night crowd, "look at what we've already done." Here again, the echoes of the past are eerie. It was Hubert Humphrey, on the aging side of the generational divide in 1968, who declared: "Some people talk about change, others cause it." Hubert Humphrey was a great man. He did not become president.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/obamas_poe try_beating_clintons.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 2 months ago
Views: 1,588
|
Do you want to know the terrifying TRUTH of Major League Baseball?
Added: 1 month ago
Views: 803
Green Day - Warning vs. Dick Cheney vs. George Bush vs. Department of Homeland Security vs
Green Day - Warning vs. Dick Cheney vs. George Bush vs. Department of Homeland Security vs. Tom Ridge vs. Michael Chertoff vs. Alberto Gonzales vs. War on Terror vs. Iraq occupation
--------------------------------------------
The recent claims by McCain's Charlie Black about a terrorist attack helping McCain were not spontaneous. The Republicans have done that before, and, remember, Karl Rove is now a free agent who "chats" to the McCain campaign.
Moreover, they are not novel. Beginning with the immediate aftermath of the Democratic Convention in 2004, and continuing through the fall campaign, the Bush Administration formally announced a rise in the terror threat every time polls showed the Kerry/Edwards campaign achieving some positive momentum.
Just like, as Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card said in September of 2002, you don't "sell a war in August", there apparently was no "need" of multiple terrorist alerts prior to the Democratic Convention in 2004.
The first, coming within days of the Democratic Convention, blunted Kerry's post-convention bounce. Remember, at that time, Katrina had not yet happened, the Iraq War was only 18 months old, and the media were unwilling even to question that Bush was asleep-at-the-wheel on 9/11. Thus, terror alerts not only diverted attention, but had the predictable effect on peoples' psyches to lean toward the known compared to the unknown.
Moreover, the media were talking about Kerry's blunted bounce without reference to the "terror threat", lending credence to the suggestion that Kerry was ineffective as all candidates always receive post-convention bounces. It was virtually impossible for the Kerry camp to "call-out" these terror threats as shams because Bush had the weight of the federal government behind him, and, to have done so, would have been to put Kerry in the position of not heeding warnings--exactly what Bush had done prior to 9/11.
Subsequent examination of the "evidence" behind the threats showed them to be flimsy and mostly out-of-date. That, together with the pattern of their coming as Kerry/Edwards were showing some momentum in the polls, provides a very strong case for their being totally a concoction brewed for political gain. The absence of such announcements subsequently, with the regularity experienced in the fall of '04, nails the case shut.
And, of course, the Bush campaign had no one who would think of, much less do, this sort of political chicanery, right? No one who would lead the country into war so that they could enact their domestic agenda, and stifle democracy in our own country.
Certainly, the Kerry campaign made many mistakes--from an ineffective campaign manager to the Shrum "consultancy" group, and from windsurfing to verbal gaffes--but, consider objectively how close Kerry came: 30,000 votes in Ohio that themselves were likely a result of election-fraud in the form of inadequate voting machine numbers in key districts that resulted in hours-long lines and a Secretary of State who was Chair of the Bush Campaign in Ohio. This, despite $30 million of SwiftBoat ads, and Kerry's delayed response to that diatribe.
Using bogus fear of death, those terror alerts kept Bush in office and tragically cost a few thousand real US deaths and 15,000 maimed irrevocably for life, not to mention another 4 years of inaction on global warming and energy independence, and absence of a health care system that worked for all.
Bin Laden himself helped Bush. Recognizing an end to the Iraq War would send the might of the United States against him, and recognizing he duped Bush into believing Iraq was where the fight was, bin Laden must have wanted Bush to win, as he must McCain. So, he obliged by releasing a tape just before the election. And, it worked: he is still at-large, the Taliban is gaining strength, and the US is being bled in Iraq.
And, Rove is out there again, lurking, just "chatting" with the McCain campaign. His credibility has eroded, and the media is on to it, so Obama can call it out for what it is, when they try it again.
Calling it out in advance, as this article attempts to do, reduces its psychological impact when they do try it. But, constant vigilance, and repeatedly calling it out in advance, is required.
True, the evidence is circumstantial. But, do not let TV-legal dramas mislead anyone into believing that circumstantial evidence is insufficient to convict....even of murder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/terror-threats-tim ed-to-t_b_109053.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 1 month ago
Views: 462
Bright Eyes - At the Bottom of Everything vs. John Mccain vs. Pastor John Hagee vs. Barack
Bright Eyes - At the Bottom of Everything vs. John Mccain vs. Pastor John Hagee vs. Barack Obama vs. Rev. Jeremiah Wright
-------------------------------
John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that...Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust...Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."
Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as "the Great Whore."
Hagee has since apologized for those remarks. But his interpretation of the role of the Nazis could be harder to dismiss, in part because McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are expected to compete heavily over the Jewish vote come the general election, in part because McCain has said he admires Hagee's commitment to Israel, but mainly because similar theories have found their way into much of the Reverend's writings...Hagee proposed the theory that "anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves -- the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive." He also wrote that "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."
Hagee is considered, in many political circles, to be one of the most passionate and strident supporters of Israel. He has spoken at AIPAC conferences and leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel. But his views of the country, while possibly shared by others in the evangelical community, can be, at times, startling. Holding to the belief that Armageddon will come to earth following the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Hagee has advocated an aggressive war against Iran and has opposed any Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank. McCain, at least in the public record, has sought to thread the needle with the Hagee association: distancing himself from the controversial comment while reaping the political benefits of the Reverend's endorsement. Appearing on ABC's "'This Week" in late April 2008, McCain criticized Hagee's past remarks on the Catholic Church, but said that, "I admire and appreciate his advocacy for the state of Israel, the independence of the state of Israel."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/21/mccain-backer-hagee -said_n_102892.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 1 month ago
Views: 561
|
Bush administration False Terror Alerts for political gain. Keith Olbermann special commen
Bush administration False Terror Alerts for political gain. Keith Olbermann special comment.
--------------------------------------------
The recent claims by McCain's Charlie Black about a terrorist attack helping McCain were not spontaneous. The Republicans have done that before, and, remember, Karl Rove is now a free agent who "chats" to the McCain campaign.
Moreover, they are not novel. Beginning with the immediate aftermath of the Democratic Convention in 2004, and continuing through the fall campaign, the Bush Administration formally announced a rise in the terror threat every time polls showed the Kerry/Edwards campaign achieving some positive momentum.
Just like, as Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card said in September of 2002, you don't "sell a war in August", there apparently was no "need" of multiple terrorist alerts prior to the Democratic Convention in 2004.
The first, coming within days of the Democratic Convention, blunted Kerry's post-convention bounce. Remember, at that time, Katrina had not yet happened, the Iraq War was only 18 months old, and the media were unwilling even to question that Bush was asleep-at-the-wheel on 9/11. Thus, terror alerts not only diverted attention, but had the predictable effect on peoples' psyches to lean toward the known compared to the unknown.
Moreover, the media were talking about Kerry's blunted bounce without reference to the "terror threat", lending credence to the suggestion that Kerry was ineffective as all candidates always receive post-convention bounces. It was virtually impossible for the Kerry camp to "call-out" these terror threats as shams because Bush had the weight of the federal government behind him, and, to have done so, would have been to put Kerry in the position of not heeding warnings--exactly what Bush had done prior to 9/11.
Subsequent examination of the "evidence" behind the threats showed them to be flimsy and mostly out-of-date. That, together with the pattern of their coming as Kerry/Edwards were showing some momentum in the polls, provides a very strong case for their being totally a concoction brewed for political gain. The absence of such announcements subsequently, with the regularity experienced in the fall of '04, nails the case shut.
And, of course, the Bush campaign had no one who would think of, much less do, this sort of political chicanery, right? No one who would lead the country into war so that they could enact their domestic agenda, and stifle democracy in our own country.
Certainly, the Kerry campaign made many mistakes--from an ineffective campaign manager to the Shrum "consultancy" group, and from windsurfing to verbal gaffes--but, consider objectively how close Kerry came: 30,000 votes in Ohio that themselves were likely a result of election-fraud in the form of inadequate voting machine numbers in key districts that resulted in hours-long lines and a Secretary of State who was Chair of the Bush Campaign in Ohio. This, despite $30 million of SwiftBoat ads, and Kerry's delayed response to that diatribe.
Using bogus fear of death, those terror alerts kept Bush in office and tragically cost a few thousand real US deaths and 15,000 maimed irrevocably for life, not to mention another 4 years of inaction on global warming and energy independence, and absence of a health care system that worked for all.
Bin Laden himself helped Bush. Recognizing an end to the Iraq War would send the might of the United States against him, and recognizing he duped Bush into believing Iraq was where the fight was, bin Laden must have wanted Bush to win, as he must McCain. So, he obliged by releasing a tape just before the election. And, it worked: he is still at-large, the Taliban is gaining strength, and the US is being bled in Iraq.
And, Rove is out there again, lurking, just "chatting" with the McCain campaign. His credibility has eroded, and the media is on to it, so Obama can call it out for what it is, when they try it again.
Calling it out in advance, as this article attempts to do, reduces its psychological impact when they do try it. But, constant vigilance, and repeatedly calling it out in advance, is required.
True, the evidence is circumstantial. But, do not let TV-legal dramas mislead anyone into believing that circumstantial evidence is insufficient to convict....even of murder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/terror-threats-tim ed-to-t_b_109053.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 2 months ago
Views: 675
OMG! Rachel Ray is a terrorist!!! Countdown with Keith olbermann worst person in the world
OMG! Rachel Ray is a terrorist!!! Countdown with Keith olbermann worst person in the world segment Dunkin Donuts/Jihadist scarf vs Starbucks/illegal Mexicans
--------------------------------------------
Dear Dunkin' Donuts: Rachael Ray is Not a Terrorist
Hiya Dunkin Donuts,
You are kidding right? You didn't really pull a Rachael Ray ad off the air because Michelle Malkin thinks the scarf she's wearing is a "keffiyeh?"
Really?
Really?
I never thought I'd say this but, Rachael Ray is not a terrorist.
I'm pretty sure your company isn't secretly funding any terrorist organizations and I'm fairly certain the scarf in question is not a keffiyeh. And I don't have enough time or energy to go into the idea that anyone wearing one is a terrorist... but... we'll save that for another time.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess Dunkin Donuts is having a bit of a "Freedom Fries" moment.
It's okay. Really. We, the American people are usually not this stupid.
Okay, so some of us were taken in a few years back with all that talk of patriotism and whatnot. But trust me on this one -- you will not see a dip in your ad sales due to Rachael Ray's scarf.
In fact, I will start going to Dunkin Donuts and stop going to Starbucks (when I can, I live in Ca... can you come out here?) if you put the damn thing back on the air.
I want it back on the air for about a bazallion reasons not the least of which is: How about we stop the racist/cultural hysteria over Muslims and all people from the Middle East?
I have very little faith in corporate America, so I'm going to expect you to listen to the lunatics and keep the ad off the air.
Just don't ever expect me to buy a cup of your coffee again.
I know, I know, you're damned if you do -- damned if you don't.
But how about just using some common sense?
Not to mention, we're over that whole "fear" thing.
3 AM phone calls and scarves just scream "desperation" these days, not good business.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-kotecki-vest/dear-dunkin- donuts-rachel_b_103817.html
(more)
(less)
Added: 1 month ago
Views: 2,436
Danity Kane - Damaged vs. My Own Worst Enemy (Original Mix) - Dave Seaman pres. Group Ther
Danity Kane - Damaged vs. My Own Worst Enemy (Original Mix) - Dave Seaman pres. Group Therapy feat. Nat Leonard
My own worst enemy/Danity Kane - Damaged LYRICS:
(note: I mixed the lyrics of both songs together)
Do, Do you got a first aid kit handy?
Do, Do you know how to patch up a wound?
Tell me,
Are-are-are-are you?
Are you patient,
Understanding?
Cause I might need some time to clear the hole in my heart and
I'm my own, worst, enemy
But you ain't, seen, the end of me..
I just can't seem to, trust myself
So what chance does that leave, for anyone else?
I've tried every remedy
And nothing seems to work for me
There's a place, in my head
A place I know I really shouldn't go
But I'm easily lead, I seem to have a problem sayin' no
And you think, it's a front
So it doesn't really matter all that much
A publicity stunt, a fabricated tendency to self-destruct
This situation's driving me crazy
And I really wanna be your lady
But the one before you left me so
Damaged, damaged
There's a place, in my head
A place I know I really shouldn't go
But I'm easily lead, I seem to have a problem sayin' no
I thought that I should let you know
That my heart is
Damaged, damaged
So damaged
And you turn, a blind eye
Cause it's just another phase I'm goin' through
Well what good is goodbye?
These things have a habit of haunting you
And you can blame the one before
So how you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
(Baby, I gotta know)
I just can't seem to, trust myself
So what chance does that leave, for anyone else?
Do, Do you got a first aid kit handy?
Do, Do you know how to patch up a wound?
Tell me,
Are-are-are-are you?
Are you patient,
Understanding?
'Cause I might need some time to clear the hole in my heart and
I'm my own, worst, enemy
But you ain't, seen, the end of me..
You try to gain my trust
Talking is not enough
Actions speak louder than words
You gotta show me something
My heart is missing some pieces
I need this puzzle put together again
I'm my own, worst, enemy
But you ain't, seen, the end of me..
Can you fix my h-e-a-r-t?
Cause it d-a-m-a-g-e-d?
Can you fix my h-e-a-r-t?
Tell me are you up for the challenge
Cause my heart is
Damaged, damaged
Damaged, damaged
I thought that I should let you know
That my heart is
Damaged, damaged
So damaged (so damaged)
And you can blame the one before
ahh.. ah..
I'm my own, worst, enemy
Damaged, damaged
damaged, damaged
I thought that I should let you know
That my heart is
Damaged, damaged
So Damaged (so damaged)
And you can blame the one before
So how you gonna fix it, fix it, fix it?
http://www.metrolyrics.com/damaged-lyrics-danity-kane.html
http://www.mlyrics.com/lyrics/Dave_Seaman_pres._Group_Therap y/unknown/My_Own_Worst_Enemy_(Original_Mix)
(more)
(less)
Added: 4 weeks ago
Views: 1,274
|
|
See All 378 Videos
|
