In a probably vain effort to maintain order around here, I will henceforth be running separate threads for discussion of the US presidential campaign. Here’s the first.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
New Hampshire thread
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I.m just going through my Information Clearing House posts and have read this Mike Whitney piece on the voting process in NH. Scary stuff! An extract:
If this election had been conducted in any other country in the world, the Bush administration would have immediately dispatched an independent team of election observers and demanded a recount. But not in the good old USA, where stealing elections is replacing baseball as the national pastime. Would it surprise you to know that (according to Black Box Voting) the Marketing and Sales Director of the company that tallies the votes (LHS) “was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to “sale / CND” and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000.” That would be LHS Sales Director Mr. Ken Hajjar. Here’s an excerpt from Bev Harris’s Black Box Voting web site:
“The Diebold ballot printing plant at the time we got records on the overages (that is, more ballots than needed for election; MW) was being run by a convicted felon who had spent four years in prison on a narcotics trafficking charge. No, not New Hampshire’s voting machine programming exec Ken Hajjar, who cut a plea deal in 1990 for his role in cocaine distribution. This was another convicted felon, John Elder, who ran the Diebold ballot printing plant; he’s now an elections consultant.” ( http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/71260.html )
Thank God for the AEC!
marky marky
I’ve been sitting on my hands for over a decade waiting for a politician to take the lead and guide this nation into the future.
It has become quite apparent that this will never be the case.
Well , someone has to initiate the first step forward and I will give it a go. I’m duelling with the powers that be and I won’t back off!
A long term national strategy for the next half century needs to be put in place and enacted.
Commenting on Fred Thompson’s performance in the recent republican debate, Mark Shields on Jim Lehrer’s News Hour observed that ’someone must have spiked his Ovaltine’ or may he and McCain swapped personalities in the Green Room!
Funny!
But Fred, as the reincarnation of Reagan (or his reconstructed corpse), was in make or break mode, and had to let everyone know that he’s still alive.
Scaper although this is going off the American elections thread, i am with you. Our politicians sadly are too cowardly when it comes making tough decisions. These days money, superannuations and travel allowances come first. It may seem a little trivial in what i am suggesting but sadly the politicians care little about doing what is required for the future of us all. Climate change should be number issue, but sadly it is not. Here in Victoria another brown coal power plant seems imminent but we have significant alternative sources of power in solar, and gas. Meantime the Victorian climate continues to heat, this year we have had already a few days over 40 and sighnificant increase in hot nights, this i can’t remember in my life time. We are simply cooking ourselves to death. But instead we continue to do little.
On public transport we have system over utlised and falling apart but the Victorian Government believes it will much better in private hands and much better with little investment in the infrastructure. Put simply the Victorian Government is sitting on its hands and letting Vic Roads and Vecci dictate policy.
Interesting times, indeed. Now, we just need to find a convenient buried StarGate…
Also reminds me of my almost-forgotten Marxist economic theory – didn’t he say something about uncontrolled capitalist economic “growth” (Through the cyclic Boom-Bust cycles ..the bigger the booms, the bigger the busts), containing the “seeds of its own destruction”?
Followed by reading an essay (in Bulletin or Time magazine? not sure where I read it now) about globalisation economics around the time of the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting, of the rise of the TNCs (trans-national corporations). The author calling it the “Super-Industrial Revolution of the 3rd Millennium”, and dating it from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 200 years (almost to the day) after the date usually used to mark the beginning of the first Industrial Revolution (ie the fall of the French monarchy in 1789).
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Quite poetic really! As someone else said “history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes” *chuckle*.
At its most simplistic, the essay traced the transition in economic base from feudal economies, (agrarian, cottage-industry based) to larger-scale industrial-based economies, and sparked the birth of the industrialised Nation-State.
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The King is Dead. Long live the Nation-State!
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Like any birth it can be bloody and painful, and a major shift in economic power-bases from land-owning nobilities to the rising merchant classes, also caused massive shifts in population, social upheavals, extremes of poverty and wealth etc – as depicted in the novels of Charles Dickens etc.
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Fast-forward 200 years, and according to this particular theorist, most of the Nation-States birthed by the IR had developed controls to mitigate the worst excesses of exploitative capitalism, at least for its own peoples, eg International Child Labour laws.
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Now, as the 20th century closed a new Industrial Revolution had birthed, leading to the decline of the Nation-State, and a transition from Nation-States to the trans-national corporation control of economic bases.
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The Nation-State is Dead! Long Live the Corporation.
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Just as one example, according to a Four Corners program back-when, the USA had reversed its earlier position on Climate Change AFTER the Kyoto Summit, after meeting with the cartels of Mobil, Exxon *et al*.
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Beam me up Scotty!
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Back to the thread though, I guess the US economic situation is taking a low-profile during the primaries, but will gain prominence during the campaign itself?
Does anyone know of a link or something, to a Democrat/Republican Party platform for what they each plan to do about it though?
I think these’s a Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” .
703 KR- I saw that too, and was interested to hear all the Repub candidates hate Romney and that they all like McCain. It sounded like either Romney or Thompson would be bowing out after SC as well.
704
marky marky
I have canvassed my project here before.
It is making progress against the current, but it is a mammoth task.
I’ll tell you straight…I have approached the major parties and have had no response as yet, but I’m still trying to arrange a meeting with the man.
Failing that, I will use my contacts in the power base to exude pressure where possible.
This stone walling is the barrier at the moment…hey, if what I propose is out of the question…then inform me of such, don’t play a non game.
Damn it…I won’t lie down and accept the status quo, because it is our duty to provide a future as custodians.
I’ve lost faith.
Those Iranian ’swift boats’ left me wondering what in hell actually happened, and then the NY Times gets the info that the audio was ‘mixed’ to the video, from noisey Gulf naval chatter. In other words, there’s no way of ascertaining who said what:
‘ The audio includes a statement that says, “I am coming to you,” and adds, “You will explode after a few minutes.” The voice was recorded from the internationally recognized channel for ship-to-ship communications, Navy officials have said. Naval and Pentagon officials have said that the video and audio were recorded separately, then combined. On Wednesday, Pentagon officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially, said they were still trying to determine if the transmission came from the speedboats or elsewhere.”
The Iranian version is that it is standard procedure to verify the identity of ships in the region and that there was no threatening behaviour from them.
Once again, we are being asked to believe that a couple of speed boats were taking on US warships in open water, in full view, and without any visible weapons!
Sheesh, sounds like a stunt, a nice ‘warm up’, for George’s ‘peace mission’ to the ME. (The one he declared he would not do, not copy Bill Clinton.)
Kirribilli, 3 words, Gulf of Tonkin.
Bush is itching for a stoush and I expect a major incident this year.
Hitting Iran is not a good idea, but posturing about it to some very nervous Arab states who are looking askance at Iran’s growing stature in the region is probably as far as it will go.
Just imagine how at risk your army is, surrounded by Shiites, and then you attack the biggest Shiite country and mentor to the Iraqi Shiite government. I doubt even GW Bush is that stooopid!
But, then again….!!!
The way I see it the scrub turkey has nothing to lose.
He is running out of time to fulfil his stain on history…could have done some better things, but imperialism has its constraints.
I hate to agree with Glen (I really do – it makes me feel dirty and sick) but I do agree that McCain’s age really does make him unelectable. While Reagan was 69/70 when he ran and was elected, he simply didn’t look it – it’s amazing what jet black hair dye can do for you. It’s also amazing what a good electoral climate can do too (Financial crises, Iran hostages etc etc)
McCain is even pledging to only serve for one term! I don’t think this neutralises the age issue at all, it just compounds it further. It says “I’m here just for a term cause I wouldn’t live much longer than that, and when you elect me I’ll do whatever the hell I want without a silly little re-election to worry about”.
Also, as I (and many others much wiser than me have said), being a Vietnam veteran is inexplicably electoral poison over there in presidential politics. Just wait until the Republicans do a Bush on McCain again if he wins Michigan. The Romney or Guiliani campaigns wont hesitate to try that trick again. And failing that he’ll be Swiftboated (probably not by the Dems, but a PAC) in a general election.
Guiliani has the best chances for the Republicans – but I still think it would be difficult for him. He might be a crook, but when has that ever stopped you from being elected president?! It’s been a prerequisite mostly.
I think some people here get confused between who they want and don’t want as US president rather than answering questions on what they think will/could happen in the elections (ie. preference vs analysis). Guiliani being a crook (Newsweek) may be a good reason as to why he shouldn’t be president, but it is not a reason as to why he wouldn’t be elected president!
Marky Marky @ 704. Weather is always changeable and never certain. It snowed today in Baghdad.! http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/winter/2008-01-11-snow-iraq_N.htm
With Australia now in La Nina most of us will have a cooler time. In my neck of the woods Normanton had it’s coldest summer day on record. And with China adding the equivalent of Australia’s entire generating capacity every 9 months what the Victorian Government does with a power station or two is irrelevant to global weather. We have to set an example and hopefully carbon trading will provide the financial inducement to do the right thing.
If anybody is interested in the current delegate counts for both sides.
http://ozdemocracy.com/?p=70
Giuliani has no chance of winning GOP preselection with so much baggage hanging around him. Does anyone seriously believe fundy Republicans will vote for a drag queen.?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8
He has done this a couple of times. And with his Status Quo view on abortion I give him no chance of capturing the republican nomination.
What people outside of the US don’t understand is the lack of party loyalty they have. People will vote for the candidate that best suits them rather than the party they come from. Giuliani may miss out on some usual Republican voters but get some Democrats in return.
Rudy needs some cash……….
CNN has learned that top staff members of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign were asked to work without pay for the month of January, and perhaps longer, so that campaign resources could be focused on the Florida Republican presidential primary.
Two sources in the campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted the campaign was not in dire financial straits. A third campaign source, however, said “things are starting to get tight” and that “it was more telling than asking” the senior staff to forgo paychecks beginning the first of the year.
Red Wombat @ 719
This would explain why he has basically pulled out of Michigan.
Konrad Adenauer was elected German Chancellor for the first time at age 73 and retired undefeated at age 87. Gladstone was elected Prime Minister for the fourth time at age 83.
marky marky @ 705 – Humans have been fouling their nest for a long time and its caused quite a few civilizations to collapse beginning with what was probably the first, the Sumerians. Of course many claim that this time it’s serious because we have nowhere else to go, so we’ll wake up to ourselves and put things right.
The history of Easter Island suggests otherwise. Wood was crucial to the islanders for 2 reasons, they needed it to build boats to catch the major part of their diet, fish (actually porpoises formed a major part of the catch), and to move the Malcolm Fraser statues which were at the core of their religion. So you’d think they would have managed the forests better, perhaps eased off chopping them down when the number of trees fell to 1,000, or 100, or ten. But no, eventually someone took an axe to the last #@#$ one in the full knowledge that there was no way back. And there wasn’t. When Europeans discovered the island they found only a few thousand wretches surviving on eating grass and each other.
KR @ 709 – Did you note the lack of noise in the background when the ‘Iranian’ was issuing the treats? Weird, huh. He’s supposedly on one of the speed boats roaring past like a banshee from hell, but apart from his voice there’s barely a sound. Maybe the boats run on silent nuclear engines and glide over the waves on a cushion of radioactive particles.
That said, however, a speedboat packed with explosives did put a very big hole into the USS Cole with substantial loss of life. Though why Iran would start of war it doesn’t need and couldn’t win is a mighty interesting question.
I know that it’s off-topic, but it seems WA Deputy Liberal Leader is suffering from a does of the “Rudy’s”
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23043470-948,00.html
And no, Mr Buswell isn’t cross-dressing, but it does involve improproety with a female ALP staffer, plus the demon drink.
PS. William, can we please have a “Saturday Salon” type post like our friends at LP ? Would reduce the off-topic noise ratio.
715
Exquisite ending to that report of snow in Baghdad:
For a couple of hours anyway, a city where mortar shells routinely zoom across the Tigris River to the Green Zone became united as one big White Zone. There were no reports of bloodshed during the snowstorm. The snow showed no favoritism as it dusted neighborhoods Shiite and Sunni alike, faintly falling (with apologies to James Joyce) upon all the living and the dead.
…and it reminds me of that surreal moment in Fellini’s Amarcord where the little piazza and it’s fountain are covered with snow, and a peacock flies down from a balcony.
Magic.
This is a hoot.
http://www.slate.com/id/2181495/
722
MayoFeral
Yes, amazing that they’d approach and tell you what they intended to do you! (Unlike the USS Cole, which was a sneak attack when the carrier was docked).
It smacks of Monty Python, and no matter what we might be lead to think about Iranians, we should not forget they had almsot a decade of war with Saddam in those parts, and are not amateurs.
I think it was Ron Paul who said with some sarcasm that his collegues were urging a war on a speedboat!
Dahlia for President.
Reading the various contributions on PB the hair on the back of my neck is starting to prickle.
The US economy is about to go into freefall, global warming appears to be entering the unstoppable feedback point (snow in Baghdad?? to the ignorant who think that it indicates that this means the globe is not warming, then I am even more afraid), Bush is playing the Bogey Terrorism game with Iran, Iraq is a bloody disaster and the world press foceuses on Hilary shedding a tear.
F@#$ sake.
It’s getting serious, and to Scaper, Kirribilli and the others who are declaring their desire to take action ( and I include Bob Brown here from Australian politics, then thank you.
Time is clearly running out. And I Hate Armageddon-Evangalists, but I’ve got young kids.
focuses on Hillary shedding a tear.
crap.
What a breathtakingly self destructive rabble the WA Libs are. Can’t win a trick even with the two most biased Newspapers in the country still on side.
However even the press is starting to dispair over their darlings.The papers have decided on which factions they support and the battle lines have been drawn. Murdoch’s Sunday Times in the Omodei camp and the West Australian in the Buswell bunker. The inane backing the incompetent and the intolerable supporting the insufferable.
And while the war of the bra strap is raging within their ranks, the Libs here find the time rant about the absolute necessity of a statue being built in honour of their last great hero.
Better they pay for a monument to their current stupidity instead. Perhaps a row of statues set up in a circle, each one with a knife in its hand? R.Court, Barnett, Birney, Omodei, Blaine, Buswell…..
(sorry William, but without an appropriate thread, an inappropriate one will have to do!)
729
The inane backing the incompetent and the intolerable supporting the insufferable.
that is great FS-
and completely appropriate on a thread which mentions the Republican party of the United States.
Warning: Satiric Humour
(and, oh yeah, very coarse language, but very funny!)
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_got_what_america_needs_right?utm_source=EMTF_Onion
A more serious taking down of Hillary:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/01/10/hillary/index.html
…ouch! And she’s a Democrat too.
Fulvio,
Just saw the ABC News Update on the story – two of the runners if Buswell doesn’t run include Colin Barnett (who is retiring at the next election) and Rob Johnston.
What can I say, the 2009 State Election will be a bloodbath for the Libs.
Hi K’billi,
read this today, looking for some light relief from my current doomsday mood.
I laughed, (nervously), but it didn’t lift my general mood. Neither did the fact that Senate Watch was on evey second blog.
Ahem KB,
my previous comment was about the Onion article.
I must say that the Salon article on Hillary is a litle harsh – is it not Ok for a woman to be politically expedient ?(our Kevin did a pretty good take on that), and if she chooses to forgive the Walking Cigar, then who are we to judge???
Other people’s relationships are a constant mystery: that’s how New Idea and most of the MSM survives.
How about Fictional Characters for President?
Republican: Ned Flanders
Democrats: Doc Brown
Independent: Gomez Addams
America can be a scary place.
On a Mike Huckabee aligned blog the following post was submitted with no opposing opinions raised.
Thanks davidoff,
now I am building a bunker in the tomato patch-
The lunatics are running the asylum.
I found it interesting in terms of the end-game was the loot the underlying management objective or am I just being cynical?
Hey davidoff, ofcourse everybody remembers when Jehoshaphat was King of Jerusalem????? LOL.
Brenton: What? Current affairs isn’t clear on this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehoshaphat
Oh Glen – get a life – get real – please – for all of us!
davidoff, I believe you and yes America is a scary place with Christian fundamentalists! But I was trying to have a joke that is all!
News from the Votemaster: The state of play in the US congress.
http://www.electoral-vote.com
Brenton: Yep – I got the joke – just threw in the link for everyone else (a.k.a. Glen, ESG, etc.).
For the truly addicted – live coverage of the Taiwan legislative election results:
http://www.cec.gov.tw/en/T1/s00000000000.html
The KMT (Chiang Kai-shek’s old party) is making a big comeback, apparently on the slogan “we’re not nearly as corrupt as we used to be, and we promise not to impose martial law like we did for 40 years last time we were in.”
Yes, Adam an interesting turnaround which will have huge implications for US foreign policy.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/12/taiwan.election/index.html?eref=onion
Oh what joy, the WA Liberals are in as big a mess as the ones here in Queensland. What a pack of clowns!
Heard on BBC last night that Rudy is in serious financial straits, that is why he hasn’t put much into campaigning so far, with a bit of luck he will be out of the way after super tuesday.
Rain at 705: I hear you. Computer voting is beyond scrutiny, The Fix is in bigtime, the Military-Industrial(political)Complex have Jeffersonian democracy by the throat, effectively snuffed.
The MSM facilitate the tyranny by finessing the rubes with 24/7 Manichean psychobabble furled in stars and stripes. Gore Vidal has been onto the rort for ages.
“He pointed to online reports alleging disparities between hand-counted ballots, which favoured Obama, and those tallied by machines, which leaned more to Clinton.
A TV documentary has claimed 81 per cent of New Hampshire votes were counted on machines that could be easily hacked into. ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=507558&in_page_id=1811
Obama is a serious threat to the Big End status quo because he would bring his own people to D.C. He is much harder to control than HRC or McCain who are both beltway connected up the wazoo.
davidoff @ 742,
I’m not saying Glen’s argument is a good one per se, but I think the point is that many (?most?) Americans could buy that in November if the surge is still perceived as successful by then.
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