Fun times in politics land

BLOG, MARCH 19, 2008
Why do they try to sell things to people with people who don’t look like people?
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I got a kick out of one of the journalists, apparently a liberal, talking about how the right wing attack machine was about to go after Barack Obama. I thought, Bob Johnson, Bob Kerry, Geraldine Ferraro and Bill Clinton? Is that the right wing attack machine we’re talking about?
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The China Institute man referred to how China’s got the gears to deal with the riots and protests in Tibet and immediately I had this image of people being fed to the cogs of a big machine, the teeth of those cogs grinding them so that they become the grease for the wheels of the Chinese corporate machine. A very unfortunate image indeed.
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I guess you can say we talk about politics the way a lot of people talk about sports or their hobbies.
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We find out today that Obama has passed perhaps the most important test you can pass as a human being seeking office, and not just that of president. He won’t do anything, he won’t say anything to become president.
Barack Obama seems to have found the new matrix I was looking for when he talked about how the middle class and the working class whites resent set-asides for blacks to pay for crimes or sins that they had not committed themselves. Perhaps that is the beginning of a discussion along the lines of Texas and Houston and George Bush’s proposal that from now on, affirmative action and other quota systems be applied according to socio-economic status rather than racial status so that the poorer you get, the more benefit you get from the government and more preference. Otherwise, no other standard or system should be used. If Obama was to put that in tandem with the mentor program, he really would turn quite a few heads, both conservative and liberal. I don’t know if, though, those few comments he made and the famous grand-mother quote are enough to show that he is headed in that direction.
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I got me a computer monkey. The latest in a long line of generational computer monkeys that have made the British Empire what it is today.
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My problem with people who call for bi-partisanship is that usually they don’t have bi-partisanship in mind.
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I think that the Pats 2007 season motto should be "so close and so far".
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It now turns out after the Mississippi returns that may Clintonites don’t see Mr. Obama as being a vice-presidential running-mate. It’s no wonder. Even though Mrs. Clinton lately decided she wanted him to be on the ticket, she had been saying for months he was unfit. She even said that a Republican, McCain, was more fit than Obama to be president. I’ve never heard of a Democrat saying such a thing ever. Now it’s coming home to roost and Mrs. Clinton may have irreparably damaged Obama’s campaign if he gets nominated. Selfish strategy.
Mississippi for the first time since 1976 has a role in the election and it’s given me to think about small states and big states, especially with Mrs. Clinton claiming that she is winning all the big states and Obama winning all the small states and that it means she has a better campaign and therefore should be the candidate. As someone pointed out, if the Democrats had been more concerned about some small states in 2000 and 2004, there would have been no Bush presidency. Some of the small states that Obama is taking now would have helped in 2000 and 2004.
What is this about vote or election fraud? How would it have been just, for instance, if John Kerry had won the election because he took Ohio when he lost the overall popular vote by 3 million votes? The Civil War General Hancock ran for president in 1880 against Garfield and actually lost the election but won the popular vote by a fairly large margin. He went home quietly. No one makes a big deal out of that.