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That's why we investigate who donates to our elected officials. We pay attention to who the big corporate campaign donors are.
In 2005, Abramoff's money, via Tom DeLay's ARMPAC , caused considerable stir. J. D. Hayworth, the Republican primarying McCain in Arizona kept his Abramoff money. Pressure exerted by NH Democrats forced Jeb Bradley to return his $15,000 from ARMPAC. Ron Paul came under fire in 2007 for refusing to return donations from Neo-Nazi Don Black, the creator of StormFront, a white nationalist website. Former Speaker of the NH House, Gene Chandler, got in big trouble for taking donations and not reporting them.
Even as oil devastates the seafood industry and the coast of Louisiana, Senator Mary Landrieu is calling for accelerated offshore oil drilling. Mary Landrieu is the top recipient in Congress of donations from BP.
A recent press release from the NHDP criticizes Kelly Ayotte for taking some $150K from Wall St. execs, including a billionaire hedge fund manager.
Given that we watch and we criticize - it was especially painful to learn that one of the sponsors of the recent NHDP 100 Club Dinner was Wal-Mart. As we all know, Wal-Mart has long been criticized for their shoddy business practices, including not paying overtime, not providing health insurance for employees, and paying so poorly that many employees are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. They are anti-union. They are anti-women. Wal-Mart pharmacies do not stock the morning after pill. Wal-Mart engages in censorship. Books, movies, and CDs purchased at Wal-Mart may be censored for bad language. Wal-Mart is an evil empire in many, many respects.
I'm dismayed that the NHDP accepted money from Wal-Mart. Not only are their ethics non-existent, taking money from them will lead to speculation about what they got in return.
18,346 - that's the number of Republicans who voted for Ron Paul in the New Hampshire Primary, according to the SoS.
And that could mean 18,346 fewer votes for John McCain here:
Paul, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination, will tell supporters he is not endorsing GOP nominee John McCain or Democratic nominee Barack Obama, and will instead give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, according to a senior Paul aide.
And as fortune would have it, Barr and Nader both made it on the ballot for this November.
According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.
(emphasis mine)
Support the troops? The troops have spoken. And by the way, if they're voting on military/veterans issues, Obama is obviously the smarter choice--no sixth tour in Iraq (bring them home!), more benefits, better care...
If the option were a candidate who wants to send you back and back and back to war or a candidate who wants to bring you home and take care of you/honor your service, who would you choose?
I really wanted Rudy! to come in fifth too, but this is just beyond the pale. A Republican presidential candidate scored 31 votes in the town of Sutton, out of 920 total. By accident it was recorded as zero, and on the following morning the mistake was fixed. Very unfortunately for Town Clerk Jennifer Call, the candidate was Ron Paul:
The assault picked up after lunch. Paul supporters phoning Call claimed to be from the media. Others just yelled, saying she had committed treason, fraud. One person said she should be shot. She received as many as 40 calls that day.
"One person said he was on a nationally syndicated radio station," Call said, "and he has given out my phone number and they need to call the town of Sutton to find out why there's voter fraud."
The voices came from everywhere. California. Ohio. Florida. Michigan. Very few were from New Hampshire.
A man from Texas e-mailed that he was "contacting, by certified mail, the Attorney General of New Hampshire . . . and requesting a complete investigation and prosecution of any and all parties involved."
<...snip...>
She went home and locked her doors. She called her mother in North Carolina. She cried. The calls kept coming. She unhooked her answering machine and requested an unlisted number.
The good people of our state who get paid little, or nothing, to work our polling stations deserve better than this.
I'm voting for Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary. I made that decision long ago, although I appreciate the vision presented by Barack Obama, the courage of John Edwards, the diverse experience of Bill Richardson, and the inventiveness of Dennis Kucinich. How's that for covering all the bases?
Actually, I believe it -- and I think those of us who are Democrats should be mighty happy with this year's crop of candidates. We all have to keep in mind that whichever of "our" candidates wins the New Hampshire Primary, there may well be more than half of us who voted for someone else so we should be humble in our victory, and find ways to unify behind our eventual nominee.
If I was a Republican, I'd have a tough choice. I like John McCain, but despise his endorsement of the Iraq War. It's scary. Ron Paul makes some sense, but the guy is off-base in so many important ways. The rest of them, well -- I'm glad I'm a Democrat
But with John McCain's recent surge (not as in Iraq), I thought it might be worth repeating parts of my www.BlueHampshire.com Blog post of this past April, with my observations of his announcement speech. I've expressed my concerns about Hillary Clinton's campaign these past couple of months, and taken a few hits for that although it bears out that something was wrong, but I'm hoping she has recovered enough to win.
But at least it seems clear John McCain did "reinvent" his campaign as he campaigned here, and may well be on track for a victory. On the campaign trail he has re-established his "straight-talk," and really hung in there and had REAL interactive "town hall" meetings. There's something to be said for that. It shows intelligence, character, and guts.
By the way -- those of us who are Democrats should look carefully at this guy. He may well be the candidate we'll be running against in November.
------------------------------------
www.BlueHampshire.com Blog Post: From Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 12:54:25 PM EDT - Jim Splaine
"There are many types of heroes, and Senator John McCain is one. He was a prisoner during the Vietnam War, and has done some great things in the United States Senate. On the campaign trail when he ran for President in 2000, he offered the Republican Party a leader who I my judgment obviously would have been far more intelligent and visionary than the one eventually nominated."
"Come to think of it, I've got to write a 'What If...' commentary sometime about what if Al Gore had won in 2000."
"Anyway, John McCain 2008 seems off-message and off-key, and seems to be an inferior clone to his 2000 self. His campaign seems badly-exhausted rather than well-tested. He sounds like he's reaching for a message rather than on message."
"I watched his announcement speech in Portsmouth on Wednesday, April 25th. I was expecting the straight talk and clear idealism of McCain 2000 which motivated thousands and thousands in New Hampshire and elsewhere to get excited about this man."
"Instead, I saw someone stumbling over his words. Worse, he couldn't seem to go through a sentence without reading it almost word by word. One would expect if you're giving about the most important speech of your campaign -- an announcement speech -- you'd know it fairly well before walking up to the podium. But he didn't."
"Whether he was prepared by his campaign consultants or not isn't the point, although it tells us something about the state of his campaign if he wasn't."
"His apparent thematic approach, if he had one, was something like "...that's not good enough for America and when I'm President it won't be good enough for me." Those words followed a few statements of things that aren't going well."
"I also found that he raced through much of his speech, not waiting for expected applause at appropriate places. Yes, it was overcast but rain was a long time off, so I don't know why he suddenly became the Hurried-Up Express."
"And I didn't hear 'the vision thing.' Maybe he's been talking too much with his friend George W. Bush?"
"But, this man is an American hero. A genuine one. He fought for us. He defended us. I wasn't a fan of the Vietnam War no more than I am of the Iraq War, but when a man or woman goes to war in answer to a decision of our government -- right or wrong -- he or she deserves respect and appreciation. He went. He fought. He suffered. Many other heroes went, and didn't come back. Fortunately, John McCain did."
"One speech does not make a candidate or a campaign -- although one given by Barack Obama in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention certainly got some attention. So, here's hoping we'll see John McCain catch his breath and become a star again in the Republican Party."
"Let's hope his campaign reinvigorates and reinvents itself. His party needs him in the debate. And the Democratic candidates need to be challenged by quality opposition as well. The election season of 2007-2008 will be all the better with John McCain as an important player, whether or not he goes all the way."
* For the first time ever, Barack Obama is leading (just barely) in NH, and in two separate polls, Rasmussen and CNN/WMUR. With less than a month left before primary day, and just a few days after the Oprah bash and Carol Shea-Porter surprise, I gotta say, this guy either has impeccable timing or is simply charmed.
* Speaking of the Oprah event, Drew Cline (!) praises it with great praise:
It was the best campaign rally I've ever attended, and the Obama campaign gets an A+ for concept, originality, planning and execution.
...Even those who left the event undecided will now carry the memory of that speech with them for the next few weeks. No other candidate will deliver anything close to it. Some, if not many, will leave other events disappointed. Nothing is going to live up to Sunday night. That will matter as people are making up their minds later.
* Frederick of Hollywood has decided to give up on our little state. Remember when he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan? Eh, me neither, because that would involve actual effort, something Frederick isn't interested in. Who knew you had to, um, campaign and stuff to run for president?
* Forget college kids: elwood may need to modify his pledge, because - get this - some ardent supporters of Ron Paul are actually moving to the Granite State so they can vote for him in the primary. It's like a miniature version of the Free State Project.
The ServeNext Presidential Straw Poll is now ready for your vote!
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CLICK HERE TO VOTE NOW!
A $5 donation will register a vote for the candidate of the donor's choice and, unlike New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Presidential Primary, you can vote as often and for as many candidates as you'd like! Progress will be reported weekly and the polls will remain open until midnight on December 31, 2007. Supplemental funds will be provided through the generous support of Thrivent.
Across the ideological spectrum, only one presidential candidate has identified in black-and-white terms the "actual and potential terrorists" who are destroying America. That candidate is Ron Paul (R).
Among those who aspire to the White House, only Paul has informed his closest supporters that "our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin." [FN 1]
Paul published a newsletter that issued those words under his byline. He has also taken "moral responsibility" for those words. Yet nine years later, Paul blamed an unnamed staffer for writing them, and claimed that it would have been "too confusing" for him to denounce those words when they were first mailed to his supporters in the column under his byline in the Ron Paul Political Report in 1992.
Either Paul was lying when he admitted to writing those words, or he was telling a belated and convenient lie when he claimed that they were ghost written by an unnamed staffer. Either way, Paul is a liar. Further, he has repeatedly refused media requests to release all of his newsletters. (Paul published the Ron Paul Political Report from 1985 to 1992, then changed the newsletter's name to the Ron Paul Survival Report in 1993.)
Normally, it would be my policy to ignore a bunch of no 'count people as a waste of the precious minutes I have left on earth since, as I get older and older, it becomes increasingly obvious that every wasted minute is gone forever. However, what the Republican party has managed to cough up as candidates for the presidency of the United States is just too gruesome to let pass without comment.
Which is probably why there are already a lot of jokes around. It's a pretty common human reaction to make fun of really scary stuff.
So, herewith, my take on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" with which I reassure myself that things are not as bad as they seem.
I was a bit depressed -- it happens -- on Wednesday evening after a couple of meetings in Concord earlier in the day, so I was looking for a bit of entertainment. It was cold so I decided to stay in after I put the lights on my Christmas tree that's out on my deck.
You can imagine my happiness when I turned on the Florida Republican Debate. I found amusement, humor, and ohhhh so much comedy. I'm not sure whether the candidates or the obviously mostly-Republican and quite temperamental and sometimes obnoxious audience had me chuckling the most.
None of these men should be President. It's kind of disgraceful that some of them got as far as Mayor, Governor, or to Congress. Ron Paul, and a couple of times John McCain, were the only ones with a degree of credibility and courage, although each was off-the-mark when describing their hopes for America's future. At least Ron Paul "gets it" when it comes to the Iraq War.
This debate reminded me again how lucky those of us who are Democrats are by having a set of Presidential candidates who stand the proverbial head-and-shoulders above their Republican counterparts. We as Democrats might disagree on the edges about different positions, such as whether one candidate's health care plan has more or better components than another. But we're rich with the depth of our choices. About health care and those other ideas, remember that all such "plans" are only talking points right now, since once the plan is introduced into Congress all bets are off and the process of legislative law-making begins. So, a few "details" put aside, all the Democratic candidates look so good compared with any of the Republicans. Of course, I'm a little biased in saying that.
I especially enjoyed seeing how the Republicans can fight and argue over even the most subtle of differences they have, with one candidate or another making up right out of thin air what another candidate might believe, only to have another candidate prove he was "massaging the truth" a bit. In politics, there are often shades of gray, but the Republicans seem to be playing with shades of truth.
If anyone won the Republican debate, I thought it was Ron Paul and John McCain -- in that they sounded somewhat better than the others, or perhaps I should say they sounded not as bad as the others. The rest sounded like a losing high school debate team. Actually, I'm not sure about that -- even a losing high school debate team has some class.
I can just visualize the debates next Fall before the November General Election with Hillary Clinton taking on one of these wiz-balls. She'll clean his clock. For that matter, any of the other potential Democratic Presidential nominees would do the same.
We can't lose this one. The future of our country depends on it.
A curious problem is emerging in GOoPerland, and it's going to converge right here in the Granite State:
* Mike Huckabee is either going to come in first in Iowa (less likely) or exceed expectations for folks fixating on the national frontrunners (very likely). In either case, he's going to come barreling into New Hampshire with a thick slice of Big Mo.
* Ron Paul will not win NH, but he'll fare much better here than in any other place, and he's going to spend a lot of money here between now and 8 January.
What does this mean for Romney, Rudy!, and McCain (I omit on purpose Frederick of Hollywood's vanity campaign)?
It means we are going to have one seriously hobbled and confused GOP race heading down to South Carolina on the ninth of January.
What's your take on what's going on with the elephants?
Sunday Update: As long as we're mythologizing GoOPers, this photo from Nashua yesterday is proof positive that Rudy! is Darth Cheney's war forevermore successor. He does seem disappointed, though, at the size of his saber. Was Poderhertz not in town?
I'm no fan of the man. I consider him a phony libertarian. But this weekend I noticed a half-dozen (young) Paul supporters in the town square, and I've seen quite a few Paul bumper stickers.
I've seen more ground-level support for him here than for any of the other Republican candidates.
Perhaps it is not surprising. He is the only GOP candidate calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Split the pro-war vote among Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Brownback, Tancredo, Hunter -- who am I forgetting? they're so forgettable -- and a single-issue candidate just might command a plurality.
It happened in 1996, when Buchanan won against Dole.
What would it mean if Paul wins New Hampshire? Some wild speculation below.
During the live thread for Tuesday's Republican debate, some of us had different impressions of Ron Paul's answer regarding gays in the military. I have the transcript. It will clarify things.
Here's the question:
SPRADLING: Congressman Paul, a question for you.
Most of our closest allies, including Great Britain and Israel, allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. Is it time to end don't ask/don't tell policy and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military?
Let's stop the tape and imagine how a real Libertarian would answer that question.
