Republicans

October 2, 2008April 18, 2020

Palin sets bar so low you would need to be paper to go lower

Sarah Palin has many things going for her. She is attractive, has a decent family, and is ambitious. She also had to be able to influence and develop personable skills any good politician needs to get to the next level. After all she went from local town politician to governor of Alaska.

The problem with Sarah is what is wrong with a majority of Americans. She doesn’t have any good knowledge of things a Vice President of a country needs to have to be qualified for the job.

It is pretty sad when someone like me, who is extremely interested in politics, knows more than the chosen candidate for such a prestigious job as Vice President of the United States.

You know the job held by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, founders of this country, Teddy Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal and created the National Park system, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who improved civil rights for minorities and helped the poor.

Palin is like most Americans who have no clue what goes on outside our borders and knows little of important history like Supreme Court cases.

I don’t think she’s stupid or uneducated only that she is ignorant of the stuff a high elected official ought to know before they get the job.

The proof is she doesn’t have pat concrete answers to basic questions like what newspaper or books she reads. She also couldn’t name another Supreme Court decision she disagreed with besides Roe v Wade. Knowing her evangelical religious background one would think she could instantly name Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963) which ended state sanctioned school prayer.

Then when her ignorance is saved on video tape and in print she excuses it as an attack on her by the “elite liberal media”.

Right. Showing your ignorance is their fault. Yep that is also an average American response – “It’s not my fault its their’s.”

Bob Cesca wrote in his article on The Huffington Post:

The presidency, as we’ve learned the hard way, matters. An incompetent chief executive, no matter how he or she has been packaged, tends to breed disaster. There was a time when we could rest assured knowing that, even if the president wasn’t all there, he was surrounded by competent people who could grab the wheel if he blacked out. But those who are supporting the Republican ticket based on superficial appeal need to ask themselves: since when has the word “competent” been used to describe the current batch of operatives surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin? These are the same handlers who camp up with the laughable “Alaska is right next to Russia” line. Put it another way, the man who first coined that line was Steve Doocy.
In the real world — a world in which America needs serious people making our most serious decisions — Alaska’s proximity to Russia has less to do with national security experience than a ’78 Nova without its back windshield has to do with a truck. It’s just not. Likewise, Joe Six-pack, while qualified for many decent jobs (governor of Alaska, too, I guess), is simply not qualified for our highest national office. Sorry, Joe! And sorry, Sarah. You’re just not up for this, regardless of what you’ve tricked yourself into believing.
Sarah Six-pack Needs To Put Country First by Stepping Down

Just as I don’t want Joe Six-pack doing brain surgery, I don’t want Sarah Six-pack one heartbeat from the Presidency.

June 30, 2008April 18, 2020

Findlay write up in the Washington Post

This morning was an article titled In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying in the Washington Post newspaper.

It profiled Jim Peterman, from Findlay, a retired worker at Cooper Tire, a father of two, an Air Force veteran and a self-described patriot, who as the paper states is “a swing voter who entered this election leaning Democratic” and the difficulties the Obama campaign has to dispel the false rumors percolating about the candidate. The article talked about Findlay itself and how most citizens hate change. Unfortunately the paper failed to mention that Peterman is a minority in Hancock county. The county is so GOP that a Democrat hasn’t won the presidential election in the county since the time of Woodrow Wilson.

I guess they were trying to show that Findlay is a battle ground when the battle there is over and has been for sometime. The false rumors will never be refuted in the minds of most Findlay people because the local radio station airs all the GOP flacks who reinforced them and Obama is left to place adverts in the paper which doesn’t convince anyone with their mind made up.

“I’ll admit that I probably don’t follow all of the election news like maybe I should,” Peterman said. “I haven’t read his books or studied up more than a little bit. But it’s hard to ignore what you hear when everybody you know is saying it. These are good people, smart people, so can they really all be wrong?”
In Flag City USA, False Obama Rumors Are Flying

People rarely change their mind in Findlay – just check the The Courier news archive on the topic of sidewalks…. That argument has been going on for more than 20 years now.

The article is yet another way the mainstream media is sweet on the GOP and McCain. If they wanted to do a balanced piece they would have gone to a more balanced district or found real swing voters.

January 1, 2008April 18, 2020

Primary start to long election cycle

This week is when the rubber hits the road and all the glad handing and baby kissing done this past year takes a breather as the 2008 US Presidential election begins its primary phase. Politically I am an independent so I don’t get to vote for a candidate during the primaries nor do I want to.

Although I don’t vote in the primaries, I want to write about some of the choices available and why it doesn’t matter anyway and that primaries are only a dog and pony show at tax payer expense.

First up is Iowa and New Hampshire. Basically these 2 states are the 4th quarter of a close football game as one team tries all out to win it in the last 2 minutes of the game. If it works the winning team moves on to the playoffs and if not then they pretty much go home.

These first 2 contests starts the process of shaking the chafe from the stalks, as lessor candidates start to drop out as momentum and money flows elsewhere if they lose or lose badly.

The end of primary phase is the respective party conventions before Labor Day.

GOP

Sorry, I just can’t force myself to write anything about the GOP candidates. The part they are all playing this year is the anti-immigrant, anti religious freedom bigots and they all simply disgust me. If you really want to read something about them then check out this website that seems to gloss over their anti-American stances – Election Center 2008. I just can’t bring myself to give them any space for their so-called views in my blog.

Democrats

This is going to be the election that the Democrats have the inside track of winning since the GOP is in a tailspin and old 24% Dubya is in his last organismic throes as the guy that stands in front of microphones and tells us what Lord Cheney tells him to say.

Congress changed hands in 2006 even though the Dems have really not done anything yet less they upset Lord Cheney so while they have a good chance of winning the White House in 2008, they also have a great opportunity to fuck it up like they did in 2004.

While my fingers are crossed I will leave the party poppers in the closet until January 20th 2009 when a Democrat is actually taking the oath of office.

But who?

I would like to see Dennis Kucinich get the nomination but unless a majority of Democrats “grow a pair” I doubt he will get it. Kucinich is my kind of Democrat – against the war from day one, calling for impeachment of Lord Cheney, and I agree with most of his positions as to the economy and civil rights. Dennis is portrayed in the “media” as a kook but he is the only one I see who isn’t playing the “Republican Lite” game.

The “media” and most political insiders have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the ones duking it out for the nomination.

I really don’t have a problem with either one, but seeing as candidates are suppose to play to the extreme side of the party – since they are ones most likely to vote in the primary – Clinton and Obama have the “Republican Lite” down pat. We know how that worked for President Kerry…. oh wait….. Maybe this time the Dems could show an actual contrast with the GOP rather than a less extreme form of them.

Clinton is making an issue of experience claiming that since she was First Lady for 8 years that she is more experienced than Obama at being President. I don’t know how that claim is valid. That is like saying the wife of the fire chief is more experienced at being fire chief than an actual fireman.

I have just never bought into the idea that someone who has NEVER been the President of the United States can claim they have more experience just because they lived in the same house as a President. Someone can learn what the job is like but until you have to make the same decisions and take the responsibility for the decisions then you can’t claim you have experience in it.

Who would I choose?

One thing I tried to do was find out – If I could vote in the primaries – who I should vote for. By that I mean which person shares most of my views.

There are several unscientific “candidate match” websites out there. Basically they all present quotes or issues and you choose which ones that you agree with. At the end the websites show you which candidates matched your responses.

The first one I used is called Select Smart. The results I got is as follows:

1. Dennis Kucinich (86%)
2. Barack Obama (84%)
3. Joseph Biden (77%)
4. Christopher Dodd (77%)
5. Hillary Clinton (76%)
6. John Edwards (72%)

Another one I used was simply called VoteMatch Quiz

Chris Dodd (75%)
Cynthia McKinney (75%)
Dennis Kucinich (70%)
Hillary Clinton (68%)
John Edwards (63%)

The My Election Choices.com website uses actual quotes on different topics and you decide which one you agree with most. I decided to reduce the amount of time I would spend on the quiz and picked only a few of the topics available. The ones I picked were Education, Environment and Energy, Foreign Policy (General), Iraq War, and Separation of Church and State/Religion. The candidates I matched up with most were (number of quotes I agreed with follow the names):

Christopher Dodd (18)
Bill Richardson (14)
Hillary Clinton (11)
Dennis Kucinich (10)
Barack Obama (10)
John Edwards (9)

Cult of Personality

Of course, to the “media” and so-called talking heads, issues really don’t matter in a primary. I tend to agree that it is all a dog and pony show because the nominees will then morph into something bland and tasteless for general consumption during the run up to the general election.

If I were a registered Democrat or Republican, it really wouldn’t matter whom I voted for in the primary. No one will find a candidate that agrees with you 100% on every issue. If they did then it might just be your clone. Yet, progressive friends of mine use that as an excuse not vote period. They want perfection.

The candidates sometimes go negative and trash their competitors during the primaries then the party expects everyone to fall into line behind the winning nomination. Of course they forget the other party then uses the trash from the primary against them.

The reason I stay an independent and refuse to vote in a primary is because I think the whole primary system is a sham and at tax payer expense. It is a prime example why our elections are broken and suspect now. Both parties have used their power to pass laws to protect their “machines”. Where else, like the Ohio Revised Code, can one find detailed laws on how a state central committee is formed and operated. If that doesn’t smack of communism I don’t know what does. Is it really the business of state law to decide how a party is to govern itself?

Why is that when an office becomes vacant before an election that party of the past holder can appoint a replacement? It is just one way the system is manipulated by the two parties. They appoint a replacement who then is considered an incumbent in the next election.

Ballot access laws favor the two major parties because they wrote the law. They have different requirements for current parties and make it difficult for new parties to get on the ballot. Next to being an incumbent, the party label next to one’s name is a huge advantage (also having the same last name as a past or present office holder doesn’t hurt either).

I feel that if parties want to have primaries and conventions then they should do it on their own dime – not mine. Elections should be open to anyone who wants to run and we should have preferential voting.

Then maybe we’ll see the end of the dog and pony show and get back to elections about issues.

July 26, 2007April 18, 2020

Courier finally uses some ink on Democrat in Mayor’s race

Sorry I am tardy on this post but I kind of overlooked the recent article on the campaign of Thomas Knopf, who is running for the now open Mayor’s office in Findlay, Ohio, against Republican Pete Sehnert in November. Sehnert beat current Mayor Tony Iriti in the recent primary.

Staff writer John Graber used about 800 words on the front page of the July 20th edition to talk about Knopf and point out that unlike Sehnert, Knopf has some actual ideas about what he wants to do in office when he is elected.

That is more ink for Knopf than I have read since the election season began. Most articles before now usually added him at the end with a kind of “oh, by the way Thomas Knopf is running too” in an article focused on Republicans.

Graber makes an interesting point:

A quick glance at the numbers do suggest that Knopf’s got a chance. Of the 26,424 registered voters in Findlay, 10,027 are registered Republicans. The Democrats have just 1,663 voters filling out their roster, but 14,734 registered voters in Findlay have no party affiliation.
Can Dems win city mayor’s office? Little-known GOP candidate giving them high hopes July 20, 2007

Local Democrats plan on a big push for Knopf after the Hancock County Fair at the end of August. I do hope Knopf doesn’t ignore the biggest event in the county. I remember as a lad that you weren’t a serious candidate unless you had a booth at the fair or at least grab hands with your presence there.

For more info:

Thomas Knopf for Mayor

November 8, 2006April 18, 2020

Yes, I will gloat in the Democrat victory

I have not hidden the fact, even though I am politically independent, I dislike the GOP so much that I will not vote for a Republican. However, I did vote for one on Tuesday and that was Joe Testa who is Franklin County Auditor.

I am pleased as punch that the GOP lost BIG Tuesday. They lost most of the offices here in Ohio including Governor. They lost the majority in the US House and are on the brink of gaining control of the US Senate.

The national victory for the Democrats is a HUGE rebuke to President Bush, the GOP, and their neo-con cronies. They were the ones who squandered the budget surplus, got us into a protracted war in Iraq on fabricated evidence, and ruined our reputation in the world community.

The wingnuts can try and spin it anyway that will help them feel better but the GOP LOST and they lost big.

The Democratic victory was also a rebuke to the cable TV and radio talking flacks who had no clue what was going on, so much so that until today kept attacking Democrats on behalf of their GOP masters.

You can stick it up your asses Karl Rove and Fox News…..

After 2004, I really thought my fellow citizens were mentally challenged but after tonight they are just slow on the uptake. It took them 6 years but they finally arrived at my conclusions and turned the bums out.

The other small satisfaction I got is in two different races related to my fight to keep church and state separate.

Deborah Owens Fink, the state school board member who was leader of the movement to force Intelligent Design into Ohio public schools, lost her election to another term. She had only 28% of the vote as of 11 PM

In Indiana, Rep. James Hostettler (R-IN) who introduced the “Public Expression of Religion Act” that was passed as the “Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006”, lost his House seat tonight.