random thoughts

superdelegates are getting tired of shrill hillary's act. about damn time is all i have to say

speaking of shrill, i jumped in and bought a satellite radio after merger between xm and sirius finally passed the department of justice's smell test. i have been listening to sirius's liberal station sirius left for less than a week and other than thom hartmann and stephanie miller, my gawd these hosts suck. especially this crazy shrill sounding woman lynn samuels who sounds like a combination of gilbert gottfried, randi rhodes (whom i like) and tony kornheiser (who i don't). she has the unfortunate radio slot of running from 1-4 pm, meaning that we get hartmann (who's decent) for an hour live and then this crazy bitch for three. the mornings aren't any better. the morning host bill press hates barack obama essentially for the same reasons joe elliot doesn't like obama- mostly words and no experience.

oh, by the way, samuels hates obama too. wonder what they'll be talking about in august after the democratic convention and obama takes the nomination.

and about the best radio on radio, i'm sure it is, but right now, i can't hear it most of the time. i bought a stiletto 100. it can connect to sirius through the air and by wifi. most of my listening has been at home where i connect through wifi. reception through the air is nearly impossible, even with these uncomfortable antenna headphones that came with it. and there is a ground based repeater tower in town. no reception when there is a reception tower in your city. not good. after seeing the reviews of the next generation stiletto, i may think about going that route as soon as the price comes down a bit more. i paid nearly $180 for it including 1 day shipping, so if i can find a deal online or otherwise that's cheaper than that (including shipping online) i'll go for that and turn around and sell this unit.

the racing season has started. i really don't care. the league fucking sucks, champcar sold out to anton and now is trying this "combined series" shit off as being the end of the war (memo to those who still care, nothing fixed. the product sucks, the management still sucks, the problems are still there, but now magnified), nascar still sucks even with the new "car of tomorrow", i can't catch alms because i work when they are on and f1 runs way too early in the morning.

and by the way, this should never, ever be seen on a college campus or anywhere else for that reason.

anti abortionists are about as unamerican as you can get. forcing your millenialist religiofascist anti woman views down the throats of everyone when you don't also protest the poor healthcare system in this country or the war that is going on in the middle east and the piss poor treatment of our veterans from that war hurts your cause significantly. i may change my views on them. but they have to make some changes too. shocking people to your side hurts your cause greatly. these people need to realize that pro-choice is NOT pro-abortion. pro-choice means exactly that- that a person is for the woman to choose whether or not she should have an abortion without any means of guilting the women into proceeding with the pregnancy. when are these people going to adopt these children that the mothers don't want to take care of? don't see too many of them around do you?

nice to see the media doing due-dilligence in researching obama. due-dilligence meaning none at all.

i woke up today with my radio set to the formerly great WHAS this morning. i may change that now. i have pretty much given up on WHAS after 1)dumping ABC news for fox news as their main news affiliate (cbs as a secondary) 2 years ago, 2)dumping uofl for kentucky as the primary team after louisville had a more successful football AND basketball season, 3)removing nearly all of their news department and going with an exclusive feed at the top of the hour with fox news and doing a badly produced local news segment afterwards and 4)dumping a local show host based on numbers. not the numbers the show was doing, but how much the host was making compared to the size of the market, and replacing the host with a TAPED syndicated program, who also happens to be one of the most inflammatory hosts on the airwaves now. he makes imus's "nappy headed hos" comments look average to the normal person. the host who was replaced was joe elliot. and it's him that i have a major problem with.

normally joe does a good job. he's a republican who tries to be neutral. most of the time he pulls it off. today he failed at that totally and utterly.

i'm not sure if he's wanting john mccain to win or hillary clinton. i do know fordamnsure he's not for barack obama, even though clinton canNOT win the nomination mathematically without using democratic superdelegates to overturn the nearly 150 (by most counts) delegate lead obama has from the primaries and caucases held. is he for clinton's nomination so that it rips the party in half leading for an easy republican victory in the white house and all downticket elections? clearly joe sees in obama nothing but words and no action.

funny, one could say the same thing about dubya (whom joe was pretty high on up until the midterm elections in 2006. its pretty obvious now that gore would have been a much better decision, but i doubt that joe would ever admit that). or about john kennedy. they offered up nothing but words. joe doesn't like the fact that barack talks a good game, but doesn't back it up with much. the difference is that kennedy actually inspired people to do great things. obama IS inspiring people to get involved in the process. words matter. the elusive young vote is turning out in record numbers to support him. he's pulling in independents (which i am proudly) and republicans to support his side. i would rather someone take obama's words and use them to do great things. he doesn't have to do much but change the attitudes of the american people and reinspire them to greatness. dubya, eh not so much. epic failure is how i would describe his words. there is truely someone who is all words and no action. epic failure to the people he is supposed to serve, the people at large and not the rich elites, epic failure to the country leaving it worse off since bush's first term in office; bush 41 his daddy, epic failure to the world community not taking the lead in new alternative energies, or scientific developments, or, hell, humanitarian developments, epic failure at even speaking. the world thinks highly of the american PEOPLE, just not its leaders. i would just like to say to the world at large, have scorn for those americans who enabled corrupt leaders in our government to trash our name. i'll take responsibility for putting mitch mcconnell back in office in 2002 in my first ever national election, but everyone else is not my fault.

so how does that above get around to what joe was talking about this morning? he was talking bad about obama because he (get this) was a member of the trinity united church of christ, pastored by reverend jeremiah wright. and much has been made of what wright has pastored about by the media.

inflammatory things.

controvercial things.

things taken way out of context.

...

wha, what's that? the media not thoroughly researching things before they go on the air with it? surely that _never_ happens.

but as it turns out, it's true. pravda usa fox news bought tapes of pastor wright to try to bring obama back to hillary so she could either beat him up more or take the nomination so that either clinton wins (highly unlikely as she has major negatives that would bring independants and republicans solidly for mccain) or mccain wins (which is good for fox because it _is_ the media wing for conservative idiocracy) but either way NOTHING changes in washington. they picked out some of the most inflammatory items in a selection of those sermons to get obama to trip up. one of the items they picked out was a line wright used, that "america's chickens were coming home to roost" after the september 11 terrorist attacks. as it turns out (and as i e-mailed to joe), wright did NOT say those things. yes he may have said them in his sermon, but HE did not put that thought to paper. it was a part of a line from ambassador edward peck, a REAGAN deputy antiterrorism director. what wright said what director peck said in its unedited context when he spoke to FOX NEWS of all people:

"I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end, he pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost."

"We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

"We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

"We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

"We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

"We bombed Qaddafi's home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against the rock.

"We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they'd never get back home.

"We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

"Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.
(begin media clip)
"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.
(end media clip)
"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y'all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that."

you see that? wright did say those words, but they weren't HIS words. that's one sermon that i have heard. there are several more hack jobs that the media has distorted and is trying to push as wright being a racist and because obama spent 22 years in his church, and that it was wright who brought him into christianity, officiated his wedding, baptised his two daughters, and that obama treats wright as close family, that the two share views. and those same people are trying to say that if obama finds that these words were that highly offensive, he should have either walked out of church or that he should have said something to wright about it afterwards.

i'm not religious. i find the practice without merit and logic and counterproductive. but i have been inside black churches for 18 years and spent a day at utcc, obamas church. in the black church, it is highly disrespectful for anyone to walk out during sermons or to even directly question the sermon. it would be like a basketball player to directly question his coach during a timeout in a close game late. you just don't do it. if i can figure that out, why can't some of these other knuckleheads?

what irks me to the point of dissatisfaction with elliot is that he is/should be/was better than this to go there with his questioning of obama. he may not like barack. that's fine. i don't care about that. but to blatantly try to use the words of someone who is not in this campaign to try to chop the legs from someone who is in the campaign is wrong, petty and something well below the standards of what joe elliot had during his 10 year run on the air at WHAS. he claims that it matters because "he chose him (wright)" and has been associated with him for 22 years, all the while completely ignoring what john hagee who just recently endorced john mccain has had to say for quite a while directly disparaging catholics, jews, and muslims.

he also glosses over the fact that mccain asked hagee for his endorcement. isn't that kinda the same as what obama has done?

the backwards thinking defeatists known as kentucky democrats who ruined a genuine shot of ousting obstructionist mitch mcconnell by rejecting a grassroots iraq war veteran retired marine colonel in favor of a multimillionaire "democrat" who has contributed to democrats and republicans (including mcconnell) and has won as many statewide elections as me just because he's rich and can self finance leaving more money for the democratic senate campaign committee to spend elsewhere. they're going to vote for clinton because she's white and he's black (unfortunately racisim still runs deep in the state and our three main urban areas aren't going to be enough to turn aside clinton) instead of using real reasons to decide. sadly people are going to use wright as a reason to not vote for obama. people should decide how to vote on their own, and the media pushing out false information does a disservice to not only themselves, but to the electorate. not listening to WHAS used to be unthinkable. however with their recent heavy conservative skew, that is a decision that is becoming easier with each passing day.

in the end, it is a self defeating cycle- the media does a lazy job reporting the news to a lazy populace that elects their leaders not on issues but trivial matters such as skin color, religious beliefs, gender, etc. and those bad leaders do not do the work of the people which does not get reported by the lazy media to a lazy populace who elects their leaders not on issues but trivial matters...

obama is truely the candidate who can change the toxic atmosphere of washington. why nobody in the media except for randi rhodes (explictly) and keith olbermann (implicitly) will get behind him is a very sad thing indeed.

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Florida and Michigan won't have revotes? GOOD. FUCK 'EM. There shouldn't BE a revote.

Anyone who thinks that Florida and Michigan should get a revote is either stupid or intellectually dishonest. There are two big reasons why this vote should not happen:

1. They broke the rules. Period. The DNC set down rules that other than Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina (which had been granted exemptions from the party), no other state was to move their primaries ahead of Feburary 5, Super Tuesday. If the DNC cannot enforce its own rules to show that actions have consequences, then the primaries for the 2012 campaign will officially kick off on January 21, 2009. This rediculousness of moving primary dates has to stop NOW and this is the best way to do it. Ironically enough, if neither state moved ahead their primaries, they would have been plenty relevant and had a say in this primary season. And speaking of having a say in the primary season...

2. People in each of those states who want a say in the primaries should suck it up and pay for the revotes themselves. This is the dirty little secret that some in the Clinton campaign don't want out there since she wants those primaries to count (surprisingly enough because she won them by big margins and she is woefully behind in states won, delegates won and popular vote). I'm not a Democrat. I did not send the DNC any of my money. But if I did, I don't want to pay for something that could have been preventable. Also one of those dirty little secrets that people don't want to release is that both states had 60 days to change their primaries after the DNC warned both states what their actions would cause. Both states proceeded without changing their dates. The individual states could have changed the dates that the Democrats elected their convention delegates back to where they were. I'm sure that the DNC would have chipped in to help pay for them. But don't try to get the money donated from millions of people to help run the DNC to fix both of those self-induced screwups caused by Florida and Michigan themselves.

Clinton is also calling on Barack Obama to push for re-votes in both states, when the only thing he can do is to suggest it. NEITHER of them have the power to call for a revote, the STATE LEGISLATURES do and BOTH legislatures have decided to pass on the option. I also don't buy the arguement that Florida should be seated as is because all names were on the ballot. Bullshit. Florida law states that names cannot be removed from the ballot unless the candidate drops out. Had that law not been in place, Obama and Edwards and Dodd and Biden definitely would not have been on that ballot and possibly Kucinich and Gravel as well. All of the Democrats agreed to not campaign in Florida and Michigan and as a part of solidarity voluntarily pull their names from the ballots in Michigan. Strangely enough, Clinton refused to do so in Michigan. She also held a fundraiser in Florida and the night of the unsanctioned Florida primary, had a non-victory victory celebration.

Oh yeah, by the way, Clinton said herself in an interview on New Hampshire Public Radio on October 11, 2007 (that is when she was running as the inevitable Democratic candidate) that the votes would not count and also the only states that had a higher Republican turnout than Democratic turnout were Florida and Michigan. By a lot. Seems like to me that the ones who disenfranchised the voters of Michigan and Florida are the state legislatures of Michigan and Florida and the governors who signed that legislation into law. Both states have a Republican majority in one state house, draw your own conclusions.

But looking at exit polling data, many people up until that point did not decide who to vote for until the last days before the primary. Obama may have had a few ads run as part of a regional ad buy in a package (which was inevitable that would run in Florida in the border markets and on national television, I can recall seeing some Obama ads on MSNBC) but he did not campaign there. Clinton actually was there pressing the flesh. Clinton only won big there based on name recognition and nothing more. And any Democrat who is still undecided or favors Clinton as the Democratic nominee, consider this- Clinton has and will do anything to win the nomination. This includes endorsing her Republican opponent over her Democratic one, calling her Democratic opponent inexperienced, but wanting him as her running mate who would have to assume the presidency should something happen to her. This includes trying to sanction and legitimize elections that the Democratic National Convention ruled as illegitimate and unsanctioned and that SHE, HERSELF AGREED TO ABIDE BY THAT DECISION.

Clinton needs to do the Democratic party a huge favor- drop out now while her party still has a viable chance at the White House. But if she is not going to do that, then she needs to accept a compromise fair to all parties- cut the delegates down to say a low number, say 10 for both states. Award half to Clinton, award half to Obama. That way, both states are seated, both candidates get their supporters heard, but both states are sufficiently punished and have no factor in the nomination process.