Young Hillary Clinton

A few giggles from this one.

No graceful bow-out for Clinton

Silly as it may seem, I think many thought she would just call it a good match and move in line to support the party over her own ambitions. Not when one believes in the divine right of kings (or in this case, queen) She would sooner see the "democratic baby" sort of speak, cut in half than give up her divine goal of ruling. I found this interesting commentary on CNN:

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Remember all those wrestling "death matches," during which they talked about guys tearing their opponents' heads off in the ring? We all knew wrestling is fake, but the promotion was awesome, because it always sucked us in.

Lest anyone think the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination is going to end peacefully in June, forget about it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton will do anything and everything to win, and the idea that Sen. Barack Obama should give in to her demands to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates is ludicrous. When you're ahead, you don't concede any ground. If the roles were reversed, she would do the same.

This race, regardless of what anyone says, is still airtight. Obama has the lead among superdelegates and has garnered a majority of pledged delegates, but they always can change their allegiance, per Democratic Party rules, and don't think for a second that the Clinton camp doesn't understand that.

Her comments to The Associated Press that she may take this to the convention in August shouldn't be dismissed. I don't think Clinton cares about the party. Last week, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux said a Clinton source told her that their focus is Clinton first and the party second.

The only way Obama can truly focus on the next step is if he does everything to get to 2,026 delegates. If he gets there first, he wins. But Clinton will go to the mat to prevent that from happening.

Everyone talks about her running in 2012 if Obama wins the Democratic nomination but loses the general election, or 2016 if he wins two terms. But nothing is guaranteed. She's 60 years old. This is her best shot at winning, and she'll leave it all on the table to try to get the nomination.

In the past few days, her surrogates, and even Clinton herself, have ramped up the talk about sexism. There is little doubt that she is trying to stir the ire of her female base and push them to demand that she either be the nominee or be given the vice president slot. But it's really about the former rather than the latter.

In Florida on Wednesday, she invoked slavery and the epic civil rights battle against Jim Crow in her quest to count the vote in Florida as-is.

Forget the fact that she once said the states wouldn't matter because they broke the rules.

Forget the fact that many of her supporters on the Democratic National Committee's rules committee supported the stripping of delegates in Michigan and Florida.

And forget the fact that her chief supporter in Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, signed the bill into law that allowed the state to move up its primary.

Clinton and her supporters now discount all of that and act as if they were always champions of the "disenfranchised" voters in Florida and Michigan. But they weren't. And the record is clear. Only when it became apparent that she needed the states' delegates to close the gap with Obama did she change her tune. She said one thing in Iowa and New Hampshire and now is saying something else.

The Clintonites don't want any compromises in Michigan and Florida. They want the results to stay the same, even though Obama's name wasn't on the ballot in Michigan and all candidates signed an agreement not to campaign in those two states.

But The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets say the Clinton camp doesn't care. Her biggest backer, former President Clinton, is telling her to stay in it until the end, hoping to persuade superdelegates to switch and give her the nomination.

The DNC rules committee will meet May 31. Expect a bloodbath. Trust me; there will be nothing nice about that meeting.

The Obama camp better not let its guard down. The Clinton camp is gearing up for a protracted battle. Folks, this is for all the marbles, and feelings -- and party -- be damned.

Only one thing is certain: If this battle goes to Denver, the Democrats might as well dump those inauguration tickets on eBay, because supporters of Sen. John McCain will need them.

Roland S. Martin is a nationally award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. Martin is studying to receive his master's degree in Christian communications at Louisiana Baptist University. You can read more of his columns at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/.

My Appologies to Hillary

As embarrassing as it is, I must retract my last post. Here is the newly discovered video showing that Hillary was telling the truth. Enjoy...

Hillary When Will You Learn?

It is amazing to me that Hillary's advisors don't mention to her that we live in a technological age. One where if something is in picture, writing, or on video it will be brought up when you make claims, especially exaggerated ones... or straight out lies. In her most recent lie, Democratic hopeful Hillary has been challenged over claims that she came under sniper fire during a trip she made to Bosnia in the 1990s. Video shown on US TV network CBS shows the then First Lady walking calmly from her plane. At a recent campaign event, she described having landed under fire. Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Mrs Clinton "misspoke" on one occasion about the incident. Yet... In her book, she described how the airstrip greeting had been cut short because of sniper fire on a nearby hillside - and that was the account she had given many times.

I was going to post more examples of Hillary's lies here in this post, but the list would be a little long. If you are bored and need a laugh, google Hillary's lies. I got 1.8 million hits. There are some funny ones there.

Supporting the Iranian people

I was asked a very simple but insightful question: "What do you mean by saying that the West should support the Iranian people?"

Well, there are many forms of support any freedom-loving nation could lend to another nation which is enchained by tyrants: It could supply them with guns, it could give them money, it could destroy their enemies, etc.

I don't agree with any of these.

I think if a freedom-loving nation was to ever lend support to an oppressed one, it should first and foremost recognize and publicly acknowledge the situation. Why are the European states, for example, refraining from separating the population of Iran, the oppressed, from the regime of Iran, the oppressors? Why do they insist on embracing and having a dialogue with those who violate the Iranian people's basic rights? We have to draw the line somewhere, don't we?

So, by "support," I mean moral support. The West should acknowledge that the Iranian people are enslaved by a bunch of unelected tyrants, and it should isolate those tyrants, instead of doing political and economic business with them. Even now, after 3 UNSC sanctions against Iran, some companies in Germany and Italy are still selling components to Iran that could be used for an atomic bomb or long-range missiles. Well, that just makes a mockery of the UNSC sanctions.

We should make any dialogue with the Iranian regime dependent on the improvement of human rights in Iran. We should not even offer to talk with the Iranian mullahs unless there are tangible improvements in human rights. We should remember that women get stoned to death in Iran.

We should also impose stricter sanctions on the Iranian regime including an oil embargo. Sure, that hurts business, but think about the long-term effects of not doing this.

It's most interesting that when there are the most miniscule election worries in Russia, for example, or other countries, all the news media harp on it to no end. But, when Iran conducts sham and bogus elections, no one in the West considers it apt to condemn the unfree and unfair "elections." So-called analysts are still saying Ahmadinejad is an elected president. Instead of these ludicrous remarks, we can call for a UN-sponsored elections in Iran, instead of legitimizing the fake and bogus elections run by the mullahs. What are the mullahs so afraid of? We all know the answer.

Finally, by lending support to the Iranian people, I mean recognizing their right to oppose a brutal tyranny. Right now, the largest opposition movement is on the terrorist list in the EU and the U.S. Why? Because whenever the mullahs sit at the negotiating table, the first thing that they request from their interlocutors to pressure their most effective and largest enemy, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

I've talked about this organization before, and I've said that as an Iranian, I believe they are the most realistic hope for a free Iran. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been on the terror list. They would have occupied seats at the Iranian parliament and became buddies with Ahmadinejad.

We should remove the PMOI from the terror lists. This is what 35 British MPs from both houses asked for last year. They took their case against the British Government to court and a UK court called the decision to designate the PMOI as terrorists, "flawed" and "perverse." Why is the British Government still insisting on keeping the PMOI on the lsit? Is the appeasement of the mullahs so important that would make our leaders trample upon our own laws and courts?

The terror designation against Iran's main opposition movement is now illegal and must be removed immediately. That is what I mean by supporting the Iranian people in their endeavor towards a free Iran. It means we should not place barriers on their path. The Iranian people don't want money, guns, or jets. It is their responsibility to free themselves. We should morally support them in that endeavor and politically and economically isolate the Iranian mullahs.

Iran: World’s Number One Power (Enemy?)

These days we don’t get a lot of entertainment from the Middle East. But, thank God for the Iranian so-called “president” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (for those of you wondering why the word president is in quotes, well, let’s just say Iran is not exactly a blossoming democratic utopia).

Today, the somewhat human-resembling Mr. President, dubbed the Iranian mullah regime as the world’s “number one” power (Agence France Presse, February 28, 2008). Didn’t I say he’s funny?

But, don’t laugh too much. Something tells me the “Professor” (another title he gives himself) has not missed the mark completely. After all, what really constitutes a ‘number one power’? A superpower basically has the highest levels of hard and soft power in the world.

Well, Isn’t Iran ‘number one’ in many ways? Of course, it is. It has hard power, but just not in the traditional sense of the term. It uses extraordinary hard power on the Iranian people to suppress and terrorize them, so that they will never think of opposing the brutal theocracy ruling them.

On Tuesday, authorities hanged a young man in a prison in central Iran for a crime allegedly committed when he was 16 years old, state media and human rights activists said.

A woman and a man were stoned to death in Iran in May 2006. Two sisters, Zohreh Kabiri and Azar Kabiri, allegedly found guilty of adultery, face death by stoning.

The Iranian regime also has soft power. But, again, not in the traditional sense of the term. For example, the state-run TV displays many of the public hangings (done by construction cranes) to instill fear in the population.

The Iranian regime is also the world’s number one power in the amount of hangings (per capita), stoning, suicides, brain drain, child executions (See Amnesty International report (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/059/2007), corruption, and a slew of other things.

It’s also, of course, the “number one state sponsor of terrorism.”

All these crimes have transformed the Iranian regime as the most ruthless enemy in the eyes of the Iranian people, who wish to overthrow it and establish a democratic order in its place.

So, yes, the Iranian regime is number one: The number one enemy of the Iranian people and the world at large.

An Unreasonable Political System

Synopsis
In 1966, General Motors, the most powerful corporation in the world, sent private investigators to dig up dirt on an obscure thirty-two year old public interest lawyer named Ralph Nader, who had written a book critical of one of their cars, the Corvair. The scandal that ensued after the smear campaign was revealed launched Ralph Nader into national prominence and established him as one of the most admired Americans and the leader of the modern Consumer Movement. Over the next thirty years and without ever holding public office, Nader built a legislative record that is the rival of any contemporary president. Many things we take for granted including seat belts, airbags, product labeling, no nukes, even the free ticket you get after being bumped from an overbooked flight are largely due to the efforts of Ralph Nader and his citizen groups. Yet today, when most people hear the name "Ralph Nader," they think of the man who gave the country George W. Bush. As a result, after sustaining his popularity and effectiveness over an unprecedented amount of time, he has become a pariah even among former friends and allies. How did this happen? Is he really to blame for George W. Bush? Who has stuck by him and who has abandoned him? Has our democracy become a consumer fraud? After being so right for so many years, how did he seem to go so wrong? With the help of exciting graphics, rare archival footage and over forty on-camera interviews conducted over the past two years, "An Unreasonable Man" traces the life and career of Ralph Nader, one of the most unique, important, and controversial political figures of the past half century.

While the United States is theoretically a multi-party system, it has operated as a de facto two-party system since the Civil War. Seventy-five percent of registered U.S. voters currently belong to either the Democratic or Republican party.

Third-party or independent candidates face a slew of obstacles in American politics, from limited media coverage to legal barriers and Congressional leadership rules. Laws regarding third-party candidates also vary from state to state, presenting additional difficulties. In addition, popular belief holds that a third-party candidate won’t win an election, so there is no need to give him or her publicity. This often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But U.S. politics have not always been solely dominated by two major parties.

Creating the Two-Party System

The notion of “parties” in American politics is not indigenous to American government itself. The administration of George Washington and the first four sessions of Congress were non-partisan. By 1797, factions had coalesced into the Federalists (who supported the policies of the Washington administration and a strong national government) and the Democratic-Republicans (who supported states’ rights).

The Federalist party eventually collapsed, and the Democratic-Republican party split further into additional factions: Democratic Republicans, who became the Democrats, and National Republicans, who became known as the Whigs in the 1830s. But by the 1850s, the Whigs had become bitterly divided over slavery. So-called “conscience” Whigs joined “free” Democrats and nativists known as the Know-Nothing party to form what is known today as the Republican party, while other Whigs joined what is known today as the Democratic party.

U.S. Third Parties

Major third parties in America have included the Socialist Party, Libertarian Party, Anti-Masonic Party, Know-Nothing Party, Constitution Party, Green Party and Free Soil Party. While third-party candidates have never held presidential office, they have ran and won numerous smaller positions at the state and local levels. Third parties have also advocated for issues such as women’s suffrage, the abolition of slavery and workers’ rights, challenging incumbent parties to put reforms into effect.

There are more than 100 national third parties in the U.S. today, but most lack the ballot status in most states to make a bid for president. The “winner takes all” system of the U.S. electoral college also favors the two-party system. In recent years, the presence of third-party and independent candidates such as Ross Perot in the 1992 election and Ralph Nader in the 2000 election have drawn attention to the need for election and party reform.

Presidential Debates

A black-and-white image of two men in suits standing at podiums at opposite ends of a stage with another man in the center seated at a desk with an American flag, in front of an audience consisting of four other men in suits seated at a long table

In October 2000, a month before the presidential election, Ralph Nader was prevented from not only participating in, but even attending the presidential debates, physically barred by the private security firm hired by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Because the televised presidential debate—the “Super Bowl of politics”—is seen as the final showdown between the top candidates prior to the election, the exclusion of third-party candidates from the event not only denies them a public forum, but also ensures that the status quo of the two-party, two-candidate system remains in place. The reasoning behind such exclusions can appear to be contradictory. As political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell says, “In an election in which now the Gore world wants to say, ‘Ralph Nader lost the election for us,’ I guess he must have been a factor in the election. But you said he couldn't be in the debates because he wasn't a factor in the election.”

History of Debates

Presidential debates usually take place during the two months leading up to an election and consist of a series of three presidential debates and one vice-presidential debate. In 2004, the first presidential debate focused on domestic policy, the second was held in a “town meeting style” with questions posed by attendees, and the third centered on foreign policy. Each debate lasts for 90 minutes and has one moderator, often a prominent journalist or newscaster.

The major presidential nominees did not debate publicly until 1960, when Richard Nixon and John Kennedy faced one another on network television. But because incumbents often refused to participate in debates, and federal communications laws required equal time for all presidential candidates, the next official presidential debate did not take place until 1976.

Since then, debates have played a major role in forming and reaffirming public opinion about presidential candidates, allowing them to strategically broadcast their personalities to a national audience.

The Commission and Controversy

Nader filed a lawsuit with Pat Buchanan—another third-party candidate barred from attending the 2000 debates—in 2004, challenging the Federal Election Commission’s legitimizing of the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). The CPD was created in 1987 by the Republican and Democratic parties. The nominees of the CPD decide the number of debates that will take place, the format of the events and who will ask the questions. Further investigations followed the lawsuit, but the CPD continues to be the main organizer of presidential debates, despite growing criticism.

The CPD was initially formed to replace the non-partisan League of Women Voters, which had included independent candidate John Anderson in the 1980 presidential debate and prohibited major party candidates from selecting the debate panelists in 1984. Opponents of the CPD argue that its partisanship is questionable due to the fact that the senior staff and board members are all prominent Democratic and Republican leaders. In order to participate in a CPD-sponsored debate, a candidate must have garnered 15 percent of voter support in a major poll. Critics say that this requirement is tailored to exclude third-party candidates from participating.

In his book No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, George Farah asserts that the CPD took over the debate process from more non-partisan groups in order to give more power to the two-party system. Funded by corporate monies, the current debate system, according to Farah, was created with the intent to stifle third-party candidates.
Debate Reform

With the 2008 elections looming, several conservative and liberal non-profit groups are working to sponsor more non-partisan debates. Increased access to the Internet has also allowed for an increased number of forums for opinion sharing and political debate. The Citizen’s Debate Commission, established by civic leaders from across the political spectrum, aims to host presidential debates that allow room for more diverse political views. However, whether or not these goals will be implemented prior to the election remains to be seen.

Keep in mind that I am not advocating that we all run out and vote for Nader, although in a way I am. I think the system should be open and fair. America promotes and exports the notion of open market and the benefit of competition. Then why not in politics? Why is competition litigiously opposed? Why is a third party candidate automatically a spoiler? Or even worse, a wasted vote?

Wikipedia has outlined the arguments for and against a two-party system. It seems a little strange that the US promotes and pushes multi-party democracies in other countries, yet at home the government vehemently opposes any challenge to the current monopoly on power. One more choice for president than North Korea and Cuba has is just that, one choice.