And Hillary wins. Congratulations to her on a great comeback win. Despite the punditocracy's unanimous opinion that Hillary's candidacy was all but over, the race for the nomination is a real race now which makes things exciting from a political standpoint.The second biggest story of the night was the massive discrepancy between the polling going into today and the actual result. I think a lot of factors went into Clinton winning -- her show of emotion yesterday, her husband's fiery answer to the Obama Iraq war question, New Hampshirians' contrarian streak -- but I think the "Bradley effect" did a bit to give Obama supporters false hope and to lower expectations for Hillary so tonight's win seems all the more miraculous. She's in a good position to go forward.
Just goes to show that no one knows anything about this race.
7 comments:
I feel like puking. Ahh well.
Crane, here's an interesting read: Do NH Primary Statistics Show Election Fraud?
I'm curious what you think about this.
That's interesting, but the margins the guy's talking about seem almost statistically insignificant. The Diebold problems in Ohio in '04 were double-digit statistical discrepancies. But because it is Diebold, a company that's been suspiciously resistant to calls for a modification that would create a paper record of each vote, I don't take anything for granted. But like the CEO of Diebold said before the '04 election, and I'm paraphrasing, "we will deliver a Republican victory in November". Dude's a Republican. I can't imagine they'd be so frightened of Obama that they'd rig an election to make sure Hillary came out on top. It's not clear that she'd be the easier candidate to beat for the Repubs. Doesn't quite jibe with what we know about them. Ditto the win for McCain. Romney's the establishment candidate most in line with Bush and the monied Republicans who run the party. Why would Diebold Inc. rig the tallies in support of the one Republican who's most frequently given Bush a hard time?
I think the biggest reason for the strange discrepancy between the polling and the results is the "Bradley effect." White folks will sometimes SAY they voted for the black guy, or that they WILL vote for the black guy, but will vote a different way behind the curtain. Same thing happened with Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee in '04. I think we Obama supporters have a new thing to worry about if Obama gets the nomination. He's going to have to poll extra huge to win elections.
Hilary and Obama are both terrible.
Obama is worse because he is a marketing scheme with no substance. He wants to eradicate issues of "race" and pretend that history and the wage relation do not exist. He is a Reaganite disguised as a pseudo-progressive. His sophistry amazes me as to how it hoodwinks very intelligent people who like to battle the vagaries of capitalism.
Obama is a "messiah", a handmaiden for global financial capitalism. He is anti-worker, pro-war and completely beholden to "market forces". Why do you think Republicans like Colin Powell and pundits like David Brooks like him so much?
I don't care that he is black. He can be green for all I care - he doesn't represent black people and their movement in any shape, way or form. He wants to continue our imperial efforts abroad at the expense of social programs at home. How is that "change"?
Here are some links - look beyond his kitsch, emotionally manipulative ambiguity of his speeches, and review his voting record (or lack thereof), his policy positions and the people backing him (all recycled Carter and Clintonites).
Barrack is a black version of Hillary (who herself is a moderate Republican on social programs and war hawk on foreign policy). She believes (along with Obama) in the rather dubious war on terrorism.
Again, there is no one outside of JOHN EDWARDS or DENNIS KUCINICH who is the closest to progressive candidate and a true Democrat. I plan on voting for either of these people (not Hillary or Obama) as I am against neo-liberalism.
Here are some links to back up my accusations:
More on Obama's power worship by veteran activist Paul Street and Glen Ford (famed black militant activists).
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14448
Obama’s Audacious Deference to Power,” ZNet (January 24, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11936 ; published also at Black Agenda Report,
“The Pale Reflection: Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Meaning of the Black Revolution,” ZNet (March 16, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12336
“Obama’s Insults,” ZNet (October 3, 2007), read at
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=13940
“Barack Obama and The Audacity of Deception: Reflections on the Manufacture of Progressive Illusion,” ZNet (December 6, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14448
“Obama Speaks: ‘Oh Great White Masters, You Just Haven’t Been Asked to Help America,” ZNet (December 11, 2007), read at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=14481
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=14612§ionID=90
http://blackagendareport.net/?cat=48
http://www.blackagendareport.com/
MORE FROM MAINSTREAM COMMENTATORS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=2&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Paul%20Krugman&oref=login&oref=slogin
Now, look at this right wing Robert Kagan's article in the Washington Post about Obama
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702027.html
"Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight terrorism."
Obama is a fart in a suit. Hillary is the manifestation of a Faustian deal between the Democratic party (which all but sold out the worker years ago) and the business interests.
Here is a list of people behind Obama:
Foreign policy/national security
Anthony Lake (Bill Clinton national security adviser)
Susan Rice (Clinton assistant secretary of state for African affairs)
Samantha Power (Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor, Pulitzer Prize-winner author of book arguing for more vigorous U.S. action to counter genocidal campaigns)
Gregory Craig (Clinton impeachment defense attorney and director of policy planning for Clinton State Department)
Richard Danzig (Clinton Navy secretary, has written on potential dangers of terrorist biological weapons attacks)
Former Maj. Gen. Scott Gration (Retired Air Force officer, former director of strategy for U.S. European Command, military officer assigned to accompany Obama on senator's Africa trip)
Former Gen. Merrill McPeak (Retired former chief of staff of the Air Force)
Domestic policy
Austan Goolsbee (University of Chicago Graduate School of Business professor, economist. Has argued that taxpayers with simple finances should be allowed to forgo tax returns and leave tax computation to IRS)
Michael Froman (Citigroup executive, former chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin)
David Cutler (Health economist, Harvard professor and member of Clinton White House Council of Economic Advisers. Advocate of tying health-care provider reimbursements to medical performance.)
David Blumenthal (Director, Institute for Health Policy, Harvard Medical School)
Jeffrey Liebman (Economist, Harvard professor and member of Clinton White House Council of Economic Advisers. Research has focused on role of earned income tax credit in moving people from welfare to work.)
Dan Tarullo (International trade expert, Georgetown law professor and former Bill Clinton economic adviser)
Eric Holder (Clinton deputy attorney general)
Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago law professor)
Laurence Tribe (Harvard law professor)
Cassandra Butts (Senior policy adviser to House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt)
Staff
Mark Alexander, campaign policy director (Seton Hall law professor, issues director for Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign)
Heather Higginbottom, campaign senior policy strategist (Deputy national policy director for John Kerry 2004 campaign, Senate legislative director for John Kerry)
Karen Kornbluh, Senate policy director (Deputy chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, has written of need to update social insurance system to accommodate dual-income "juggler families")
Best,
PAPA
After reading all that:
https://donate.barackobama.com
Here is the link to donate to OBAMA!!
-Peggy
I guess I will stop posting things if nobody reads them. It's pretty exhausting.
These are all from credible sources.
Obama is running as a "progressive" candidate for change.
I am merely showing that this is just not true - its all marketing. He is a neo-liberal through and through. Even Bill Bennett is championing him.
Now, if people want to pretend that Obama is this messiah (JFK, RFK revisited) that will clean up the dirt of the capitalist system -then by all means vote. Like Plato's allegory of the cave, people resist to go out into the sunlight to seek the truth - as it is too blinding and unsettling.
If you are a social democrat, progressive or someone that believes in a strong public commons, regulation of corporations and capital, a sober military used for only self-defense and against imperialism and an expansion of social programs for reconstruction within our country -then Obama is NOT your man.
Read the links and let's debate.
- PAPA
Neoliberal:
What did Clinton do? Was he so progressive?
Telecommunications Act of 1996 - which led to concentrated media ownership.
Illegal sanctions/bombings on Iraq and invasion of Kosovo under ground for "humanitarian intervention".
Extraordinary rendition (Torture) got approval for the first time in the USA from the Clinton administration.
Pushed WELFARE TO WORK ACT - which gutted last of Keynesian welfare state. This is a joke and adored by Republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Reconciliation_Act
Pushed NAFTA (which has decimated local communities in US/Mexico/Canada) and is the culprit behind immigration (as people who are destabilized try to find better work, etc). Moreover, NAFTA has pushed for corporate personhood - making it next to impossible for a community to sue a company for malfeasance.
Pushed for THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act
Put into motion the occupation of Iraq. Bush later said he expanded tools that Clinton already had in place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Liberation_Act
Allowed legislation that has led us to the subprime mortage crisis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Services_Modernization_Act
In 1999, the Financial Services Modernization Act overturned the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The Act effectively barred banks, brokerages and insurance companies from entering each others' industries, and separated investment banking and commercial banking. The law was enacted in response to revelations of gross corruption and manipulation of the market by giant banking houses that organized huge corporate mergers for their own profit, leading to the collapse of the stock market in 1929.
The Wall Street Journal celebrated the agreement to end such restrictions with an editorial declaring that the banks had been unfairly scapegoated for the Great Depression. The headline of one Journal article declared, "Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade."
The unleashed and deregulated financial services sector boomed, bringing us the speculative boom that in turn gave us the temporary budget surplus of the late 1990s and the finance-led booms and busts since then.
The hedge fund was not invented in the 1990s, but it was under Clinton that they were transformed into their modern form, with the Clinton White House cheerleading that transformation. In 1998, when the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, collapsed, leading to federal intervention, the president established the Working Group on Financial Markets. In February 2000, it concluded that hedge funds needed no regulation.
Clintonism never saw a sector it didn't want to deregulate. Wholesale electricity deregulation began under George H.W. Bush, but Clinton worked relentlessly to extend it and bring it to the retail level. We forget that Ken Lay, the founder of Enron and the driving force behind electricity deregulation was a friend of and mentor to Clinton as well as George W. Bush.
Enron gave $420,000 to Clinton 's party over three years and donated $100,000 to his inauguration festivities!!!
Clinton 's appointees on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) aggressively deregulated the electric grid system, even refusing to step in when Enron and other electricity traders' manipulation of prices drove California to the edge of bankruptcy.
Clintons push of this economic model promotes:
1) low wages and high inequality
2) contributed to a U.S. economy in which 30% of workers earn "low wages" (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is "underemployed"; only 40% of the working age population in the U.S. is considered adequately employed
3) The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) has shown that the driving force behind rising inequality in the United States has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry.
4) Under the U.S. Bill Clinton administration – steered by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin – was the temporary and unstable policy inducement of economic growth via government-supported financial and housing market speculation, with low unemployment, but also with low inflation. This unusual coincidence was made possible by the disorganization and dispossession of the American working class
5) Berkeley sociologist Angela Davis has argued and Princeton sociologist Bruce Western has shown that the astonishingly high rate of incarceration in the U.S. (1 out of every 37 American adults is in the prison system), heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, and stimulating economic growth through maintaining a contemporary slave population within the U.S. and promoting prison construction and militarized policing.
6) Neoliberalism is a theory of political-economic practices that dedicates the state to championing private property rights, free markets, and free trade, while deregulating business and privatizing collective assets.
Ideologically, neoliberals promote entrepreneurialism as the normative source of human happiness.
Neoliberalization is a form of capitalist "creative destruction". This indicates that while neoliberalism is a critical concept with a critique of capitalist class relations, it is not strictly a Marxist concept; the Marxist term for neoliberalism is "primitive accumulation."
Neoliberalism has become hegemonic world-wide, sometimes by coercion. Opponents of neoliberalism argue that neoliberalism is the implementation of global capitalism through government/military interventionism to protect the interests of multinational corporations.
Even neoliberal proponent Thomas Friedman has argued approvingly, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist."
In its commitment to belligerent capitalism, neoliberalism is linked to neoconservatism.
In fact other critics argue that not only is neoliberalism's critique of socialism wrong but that it cannot deliver the liberty that is supposed to be one of its strong points.
WOW! Yes, give me 4 more years of Hillary or Barrack! Total Progressives! What a crock of shit!
- PAPA
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