Wake up America |
| Clinton Supporters Receiving Death Threats From Obama Supporters Posted: 17 Jul 2008 12:05 PM CDT Spending the last hour doing searches into something written over at PUMA PAC, it is apparent that there is some concern about death threats from Barack Obama supporters against Hillary Clinton supporters. For the record, I am a conservative that is backing John McCain. I was never a Hillary supporter and had much criticism for her up until about six months before the Democratic primaries ended where I developed a grudging respect for her ability to fight against the bias, the unfair news coverage and the general misogyny I saw leveled against her and her 18 million supporters. I might not agree with her policy stances, but that in no way takes away from the grudging admiration I came to have for her as a woman and a politician. With that said... There are number of Hillary Clinton supporters that refuse to vote for Barack Obama, some willing to sit out the election, others preparing to vote for John McCain and still others that continue their valiant battle to force a roll call vote in at the Democratic convention to be held in August, wanting her name to in nomination so the superdelegates actually have a choice to publicly state who they support. All the Hillary supporters listed above are the subject of this post. Many are reporting that they are receiving death threats from Barack Obama supporters and the list that PUMA PAC has published is still growing. Senator Obama's supporters asked Hillary Clinton to publicly distance herself from a long-time Hillraiser fundraiser and loyal supporter, Ricki Lieberman, who is working day and night to save our party from a landslide loss in November by highlighting the weaknesses of Obama the candidate. Senator Clinton promptly complied. One of those names on the list is Representative Sheila Jackson, a Democrat that refused to "fall in line" and back Barack Obama after the primaries were over. In looking further into this, I found many other references to these death threats. For example, on the Hillary Clinton Forum, there is a thread titled, " I'm getting very disturbed by these death threats to Hillary supporters - should authorities be notified?" In the following comments, there are people claiming they too have received death threats because of their continued support for Hillary and their opposition to Obama. Doug Ross points out that there are others having the same problem. Via Hillary's My Girl08: One evening I received a phone call another death threat and then shortly after my son came in and yelled fire. Someone set my tree on fire. The fire department said the fire was arson. It would be very easy for Barack Obama to get in front of this and simply, publicly denounce those types of threats and let the weight of it fall to only those making the threats. I am still going through the variety of sites and have not seen other specific examples, so to any Hillary Clinton supporters that have received death threats or any threat for that matter, please either forward the email, with the complete header to wakeupamerica.spree@gmail.com or simply copy and paste everything into the comment section of this post and I will add them as an update to the original piece. Secondly, if you have been threatened offline, please describe those threats in the comment section. Last but not least. If you receive a threat offline, report it to the authorities immediately to make sure there is a public record and if the threats are made online, you should immediately contact your local FBI office, either by Internet Form or a phone call, both of which you can find here at the FBI contact page. Barack Obama cannot be held directly responsible for the acts of some unhinged supporter(s), but he does need to publicly denounce those types of threats and he needs to do it fast. . |
| Chain Of Command Gaffe Made By Barack Obama Ignored By Media #2 Posted: 17 Jul 2008 11:30 AM CDT This was mentioned yesterday in a short post but it bears looking a little deeper into the ramifications of the inexperience that Barack Obama actually showed with his comment about the Joint Chief of Staff. Barack Obama said, "I'm going to call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and give them a new mission, and that is to bring the war in Iraq to a close." The problem is that the Joint Chief of Staff does not have operational command of the U.S. Military. It is a common misconception that the Joint Chief of Staff runs military operations for those that have no military experience, but according to the chain of command for the United States, the responsibility of conducting military operations goes directly from the President of the United States of America to the Secretary of Defense and straight from there to the Unified Combatant Commands. Those orders bypass the Joint Chief of Staff completely. The primary responsibility of the Joint Chief of Staff is to ensure the personnel readiness, policy, planning and training of their respective military services for the combatant commanders to utilize. They also militarily advise the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense with the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff being a chief military adviser to both. CNN, while showing the clip of Obama saying "I'm going to call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and give them a new mission, and that is to bring the war in Iraq to a close. We are going to get out", which can be seen here, never mentioned the misstatement by Obama and, as of now, a search shows that no other major news organization has reported the gaffe. Originally this was caught by conservative writer and radio show host, Hugh Hewitt from Townhall and picked up by NewsBusters and The Media Research Center, who instantly sent out an alert via email. Bloggers have picked up on this with Dean Barnett, from the Weekly Standard Blog, asking, "As he's been running for office for 18 months now, shouldn't he have found some time to explore the way the president interacts with the military rather than repeat canned (not to mention erroneous) assumptions he's probably held since his community organizing days?" The question here is where is the media on this? CNN actually showed the clip of Obama's words, which means the gaffe was shown publicly but they haven't reported on that specific aspect of his comment yet. The second question revolves around the type of knowledge Americans expect from those running to be the Commander in Chief of the United States Military. Do Americans expect candidates to understand the chain of command and the duties and responsibilities of those they wish to command? . |
| Isabel Garcia-Deputy Pima County Public Defender-Needs to Go-UPDATE Posted: 17 Jul 2008 07:06 AM CDT  [UPDATE JULY 17, 2008] Original article here. This story is starting to pick up some traction and we need to keep up the pressure on Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry [contact information below], the State Bar of Arizona and the ethics review boards of the Bar and Pima County Merit Rules and Personnel Policies [Pima County Human Resources]. Speaking of the Pima County Merit Rules and Personnel Policies, they can be found here. Isabel Garcia has violated Rule 7-119 [Rules of Conduct] and the disciplinary procedures are addressed under Rule 12 [Disciplinary Actions, Administrative Suspension and Administrative Suspension; specifically Rule 12.1 C 10 and 12]. I know people who were fired for "dirty" emails on county time--Garcia's behavior is far more egregious in scope and gravity. I also reported this woman to the State Attorney and received this response via email: If you believe a public official to have broken the criminal or ethicalI would strongly suggest taking this action as well and keep flooding them with reports. It's interesting to note the media in Tucson [the notable exception, of course, being Jon Justice' morning show on 104.1 The Truth, from 6-9am Monday through Friday, who first broke the story] has yet to pick up this story but has, in fact, buried it, despite the outcry from the citizens of Tucson wanting investigation and exposure. Of course, Garcia is a democrat and figures she's protected. However. Legal, taxpaying citizens of Tucson, those who pay Garcia's wage, have spread the word far and wide. Michelle Malkin has two stories about this incident, "Unhinged in Arizona: Open Borders mob, led by public official, ravages Joe Arpaio effigy" here and "Tucson open-borders official gloats about effigy-beating here". So far, there are 211 comments on the first article and 39 on the second article. Some of those comments are hilarious, yet a few bring home a point people are noticing and it's not a pretty point. Some of the comments from "Unhinged":
The only difference I see here, between Islamo-terrorists, and Azlano-terrorists is the language. And, some comments from "Tucson Open Borders":
These people and this women in paticular have absolutley no respect, morals or shame. Reminds me of some middle eastern street protest, what's next burning the American Flag and Death to America signs.
One thing more and more people are seeing in Garcia's actions is how similar her actions are to the terrorists we are fighting and to the Mugabe regime. This is disturbing in the extreme. Commenter Bill Grant, above, has the photos exactly right--Garcia emulates Berg's murderers well. Several commenters and people calling in to Jon's show have made the observation should anyone have committed this "act of free speech" upon an effigy of Garcia or an illegal, there would be an uproar for weeks based on the alleged hate crime implicit in such an action, yet Garcia gets away with this action with impunity. Such is the hypocrisy of the lunatic left and their fringe followers. The commenters and callers are, of course, correct. Here is the official, 2004 definition of "Hate Crime" from the FBI website here: It's about time that definition applied to those covered and committing such acts themselves. Garcia committed a hate crime--and encouraged juveniles to commit a hate crime themselves--with her actions. Just because she is Mexican and follows the Reconquista/Aztlan/La Raza agenda does not mean she's immune from the laws applying to the United States. She claims Jon Justice and Joe Arpaio are "haters"--yet who stands like a Nick Berg murderer holding an effigy severed head? Jon Justice is just as entitled to his opinion and Freedom of Speech as Garcia; Joe Arpaio is doing his job of enforcing laws on the books, as he was elected to do. Neither are inciting riots, contributing to the delinquency of minors or disrupting private business. They are not involved in conflicts of interest as Garcia is--encouraging illegal activities while on the county payroll; hiding behind hate crime legislation when it suits their purpose; committed to the overthrow of the US Government she's sworn to uphold and violating her oath as an attorney. If people don't like what Jon has to say they won't tune him in. If they don't like Arpaio's actions, they'll vote him out of office. We don't have those choices with Garcia. She was appointed to her position and Huckleberry refuses to remove her, despite a growing demand from the legal taxpayers of Pima County. Now, here's the "rich" part. Garcia responds on the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos website here. Her "rebuttal" is entitled, "Response to Sheriff Arpaio Protest" and is nothing more than a "whine fest"; not once does she address her own wrongdoing. She pulls the usual spin; below are some quotes (comments of mine inserted and emphasized): ...many of us in Tucson have made a promise that we will not allow him to come into our town without him hearing from those of us who stand in support of the thousands of workers and their families who have borne the brunt of his narrow-minded, ignorant policies. That he would come to Tucson to promote a book filled with lies, fear, and ignorant perspectives about immigrants, was especially appalling to us.Follow the link and read the entire drivel--make sure your stomach is empty beforehand as you will be heaving at the heaping of self serving, absolute delusional lunatic agenda. The Tucson Citizen also has an article up entitled, "The big debate: Joe Arpaio, pinata". Below are some quotes from that article: Immigration rights protesters acted like "out-of-control, raving Garcia, whose Human Rights Coalition organized the protest, said breaking the piñata was "funny."And that last line is the very heart of the matter--had this been a white person engaging in this kind of behavior, a white Pima County Deputy Public Defender, paid by the legal taxpaying citizens, and this had been a klan rally, they would have been fired already. Denogean's article, "Protesters as offensive as Sheriff Arpaio", has this to say:
That's the kindest description I have for the immigration rights protesters who beat to a pulp a piñata meant to represent the sheriff during Arpaio's visit to Tucson last week. While the beating of Arpaio in effigy proceeded, Isabel Garcia, head of Humanos Derechos, a group that purports to stand for the dignity of all human beings, stood by and laughed.Follow the link above to the rest of the article--it's extremely enlightening. The Citizen also ran a poll with that article asking, "Do you think Coalicion de Derechos went too far when it smashed an Arpaio pinata?". Overwhelmingly, the answer was "Yes, members act like the people they say they hate (91%) compared to just six percent saying "No, it was deserved" and two percent saying "Other" (total number of votes=759). The bottom line is this: Isabel Garcia, Pima County Deputy Public Defender, paid by the legal taxpayers of Pima County, needs to be fired and disbarred. Please follow the links to the appropriate officials and agencies and keep up the pressure. The officials and agencies will do NOTHING about it without overwhelming public pressure, stating clearly and unequivocally we are tired of this nonsense and we want the cancer GONE. Do your part to remove the cancer that is Isabel Garcia. ================ |
| McCain Surrogate Carly Fiorina Meets With Clinton Supporters and 'Hillraisers' Posted: 16 Jul 2008 11:52 PM CDT The above video is of Lady Rothschild, a founder of Together4Us.com, a Hillary Clinton supporter. You can find out more about Rothschild from her Forbes profile here and more history here. Tuesday, July 15, 2008, Carly Fiorina spent an hour and a half meeting about 25 Hillary Clinton supporters, activists and prominent fundraisers, at a private home, discussing a variety of issues, from health care to foreign policy to workplace rights. Amy Siskind, who is a former wall Street executive, helped organize the town-hall style meeting and although she declined to identify the majority of those that attended the meeting, many of which preferred to maintain their privacy, some of those attending were not as concerned with such privacies. Siskind said the group told Fiorina that if McCain would give some concrete assurances of support on such issues, the people in the room and the organizations they represented could help deliver "hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of votes" to the presumptive Republican nominee. The meeting was hosted by a recently formed pro-Hillary organization, Together4Us.com, which has been especially critical of Barack Obama and representatives from the Just Say No Deal group attended the meeting as well. Together4Us.com lists its founders as Jill Iscol, Lady Lynn de Rothschild (from the video above) and Gretchen Glasscock. Also attending the meeting were a number of Clinton supporters known as "Hillraisers" who are people that collected over $100,000 for the Clinton campaign during the primary season and according to Fiorina, "I didn't ask how many of them were Hillraisers but certainly a number of them were." Recently Fiorina hosted another meeting of this type in Ohio with Clinton supporters. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have been vying for the Clinton supporters and many of them have gravitated to Obama as Clinton has asked them to, but a percentage of those voters have refused to back Obama for the general election and are looking at McCain and deciding if there is enough common ground on certain issues for them to feel comfortable in supporting him for the general election. One issue that received very little attention at this meeting was abortion and Fiorina explains, "John McCain has a very strong record of being pro-life, as do I. They knew that. This was not a one-issue crowd.'' In June it was reported that 17 percent of Clinton supporters would vote for John McCain and 22 percent would stay home and not vote at all. Out of that 22 percent, Fiorina, who was the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co., and is now a McCain adviser, has been arranging and agreeing to meet with as many prominent disaffected Clinton supporters, activists and fundraisers as possible to address their concerns, explain McCain's stances and persuade them to actively support John McCain for the presidency. . |
| Was Acknowledging The New Yorker Satire A Blunder? Posted: 16 Jul 2008 09:10 PM CDT LA Times' Top of the Ticket makes a very persuasive argument as to why the Obama campaign might have strategically blundered by reacting to the cover of The New Yorker Magazine.  They may have highlighted it and caused millions more people to actively seek it out to see it than would have had his campaign simply shrugged it off. Teaser:
Read the whole analysis at Top of The Ticket. Andrew Malcolm is right, this was a major PR gaffe on the part of the Obama campaign. . |
| Barack Obama Doesn't Understand The Chain Of Command and The Media Ignores His Comments Posted: 16 Jul 2008 08:13 PM CDT NewsBusters has caught a major gaffe on the part of Barack Obama and yet the media, even the station where he made his incorrect comments, has not mentioned it and they did not even correct him at the time.
Read the rest at NewsBusters. Where is the media on this? Hello? The man wants to become the president and he doesn't even know the chain of command of which he thinks he is capable of running? That is a lack of knowledge, experience and basic common sense for speaking about something, publicly, that he has no idea about! Hat tip to Cassie for the email. |
| Jesse Jackson Shows Hypocrisy By Calling Blacks, Niggers. Posted: 16 Jul 2008 06:16 PM CDT Recently Jesse Jackson created a major firestorm with his stated desire to mutilate parts of Barack Obama's anatomy. Fox News held back other remarks that Jackson made, which have now been reported by TVNewser. Jackson called black people niggers. The portion shown in the original video was where Jackson had said that Barack Obama was "talking down to black people". What wasn't shown was the remark made after that. The full remark was, "Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling niggers how to behave." Bill O'Reilly, went on Shep Smith's show, The Fox Report, and stated that a "weasel" leaked it to the internet, so he will address the topic on his show tonight on O'Reilly's show. He claims they left it out of the original report because the "trashtalk" wasn't aimed at Obama, so they made an editing choice to only include the portion that was aimed at Obama. This brings back up a situation in 2006 when Michael Richard's, who played Kramer on the popular Seinfeld television comedy show, called members of his audience at a stand up routine, niggers, and Jesse Jackson was very high profile in insisting that the word not be used publicly or privately due to the offensive nature of the word. In fact, Jackson called for a boycott of all entertainment media that used the word. Jackson also asked the public not to buy a DVD box set of the seventh season of the TV show "Seinfeld" that was released last week. Richards played wacky neighbor "Kramer" on the show, although Jerry Seinfeld would be hardest hit by a boycott of the DVD. Richard's also appeared on Jesse Jackson's radio show "Keep Hope Alive" and apologized as well as made many other appearances and many other apologies. On that program, after Richard apologized, Jackson went on to say, "A simple apology does not deal with the depth of the trauma. The first step is to acknowledge you're wrong. The second step is to be contrite about it, not arrogant. The third is, it takes time to regain or earn trust, and that's where the healing process begins." Jesse Jackson used the incident with Richard to call on the entertainment industry to ban the n-word, including rap artists that use it in the lyrics, actors and major television and movie studios. This campaign, led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton was felt in cities around the country, with s New York city council banning the use of the word in an attempt to eradicate it. The resolution they passed didn't even include the word, they simply referred to it as the "N-Word". From New York straight to Texas, where a Mayor proposed making the punishment for using the word a crime equal to disturbing the peace and punishable by a fine of up to $500. This brought about tremendous criticism, with Chris Rock, a black comedian telling Reuters in an interview, "What, is there a fine? Am I going to get a ticket? Do judges say, 'Ten years, nigger!' " Jesse Jackson made this as high profile as possible back in 2006, which brings up the question of hypocrisy. Is it hypocritical for Jackson to have tried to get movies, books and the entertainment industry, as well as the general public, to ban the use of a word that he, himself, utilizes? Shep Smith brings up another interesting question in the video at the top of this piece, and that is with the amount of times that Jesse Jackson has appeared on television, it is strange that he would say such things knowing that the microphones are never turned off while attached. Something to think about. More from Michelle Malkin on this issue. . |
| South Carolina In An Uproar Over London Gay Tourism Ad Posted: 16 Jul 2008 04:12 PM CDT  Amro Worldwide is a travel agency that focuses in gay travel and in a series of ads with posters plastering the London subway regarding 6 U.S. cities. The state of South Carolina is in an uproar over the "South Carolina is so gay" advertisement. The advertising campaign was which is being called "the gayest ever mainstream media advertising campaign in London", was designed by an Australian firm called "Out Now" for the Amro Worldwide Travel Agency. Although there was no backlash from the other 5 major U.S. cities, in South Carolina the reaction was almost immediate after a South Carolina political blog called The Palmetto Scoop discovered the advertising campaign and the poster specifying South Carolina and wrote about it.. The advertisements were timed for London's Gay Pride Week, which ended Saturday. The posters touted the attractions of the state to gay tourists, including its "gay beaches" and its Civil War-era plantations. Gay rights have been a hot button topic for South Carolina and almost immediately after finding out about this advertisement, the Republican Senator from Greenville, S.C., David Thomas, called for an audit of the advertising budget handled by the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. He also issued a statement stating, "South Carolinians will be irate when they learn their hard earned tax dollars are being spent to advertise our state as 'so gay.'" The tourism department canceled the $5,000 for the posters advertising the state, claiming that a state worker approved the ad without running it by senior officials and that state worker has since resigned. South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford, agreed the posters were "inappropriate". The chief executive of Amro Worldwide, Andrew Roberts, said the campaigned was designed specifically to "send a clear message to everyone who sees this campaign that it is long past time that 'so gay' should be used as a negative phrase of disapproval." He called the campaign a success asserting that they reached over 2 million people in London and continued on to say, "From where we sit, and for all our many customers, being described as 'so gay' is not a negative thing at all. We think it is just great to be so gay." State tourism officials insisted that they had known nothing about the campaign. But when the promotion was first announced last month, the tourism board said in a statement that "it sends a powerful positive message." After dealing with irate residents of South Carolina, they have reversed that position. One comment from a resident, a Mr. Ventphis Stafford reacted to the advertising campaign by stating, "We're so gay? Nah. Wrong state. Go to California." According to the Gay and Lesbian Travel Association estimates, gay tourism is a $64.5 billion market in the United States and they claim to have gay-themed campaigns in over 75 cities around the world with no controversy. They also maintain that the reason this campaign is causing an uproar in South Carolina is because recently there was a debate over gay rights in the schools. That debate ended with a principal of a Columbia high school resigning his position rather than approving the creation of a Gay-Straight Alliance at the school. They certainly miscalculated in using South Carolina. . |
| Viva la France!: Muslim woman deemed too submissive to be French Posted: 16 Jul 2008 03:28 PM CDT   Cross posted from Radarsite http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKL1173478020080711?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&sp=true Muslim woman deemed too submissive to be French By Estelle Shirbon Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:31pm BST PARIS (Reuters) - France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes, a legal ruling showed on Friday. The case will reignite debate about how to reconcile freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the French constitution, and other fundamental rights, which many in France feel are being challenged by the way of life of some Muslims. Le Monde newspaper said it was the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected for reasons to do with personal religious practice. "She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes," said a ruling by the Council of State handed down last month and sent to Reuters on Friday to confirm a report in Le Monde. The Council of State is a judicial body which has final say on disputes between individuals and the public administration. Married to a French national, the woman arrived in France in 2000, speaks good French and has three children born in France. She wears a black burqa that covers all her body except her eyes, which are visible through a narrow slit, and lives in "total submission" to her husband and male relatives, according to reports by social services. Le Monde said the woman is 32. The woman's application for French nationality was rejected in 2005 on grounds of "insufficient assimilation". She appealed to the Council of State, which last month approved the rejection. In the past, nationality was denied to Muslims who were known to have links with extremist circles or who had publicly advocated radicalism, which is not the case here. VIRGINITY ROW The ruling comes weeks after a heated debate over whether traditional Muslim views were creeping into French law, prompted by a court annulment of the marriage of two Muslims because the husband said the wife was not a virgin as she had claimed to be. In the case of the Moroccan woman, Le Monde suggested the Council of State had gone to the opposite extreme by rejecting the woman's beliefs and way of life rather than accommodating them. "Is a burqa incompatible with French nationality?" the newspaper asked. The legal expert who provided a formal report on the case to the Council of State wrote that the woman's interviews with social services revealed that "she lives almost as a recluse, isolated from French society," Le Monde reported. "She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind," Emmanuelle Prada-Bordenave wrote. Le Monde quoted Daniele Lochak, a law professor not involved in the case, as saying it was bizarre to consider that excessive submission to men was a reason not to grant citizenship. "If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French," Lochak said. (Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)  A note from Radarsite: "...she lives almost as a recluse, isolated from French society," Le Monde reported. "She has no idea about the secular state or the right to vote. She lives in total submission to her male relatives. She seems to find this normal and the idea of challenging it has never crossed her mind," So there you have it, in one short paragraph: the key perhaps to that impenetrable Muslim female mindset. Ignorance is bliss. To a westerner, the submissive compliance of Muslim women -- indeed, their often passionate defense of their obvious subjugation, their ignoble state of second-class citizenship, has always been something of a mystery. We wonder how they can accept a fate which to us appears so bleak and unfulfilling, an existence so circumscribed and limited. Not only accepting it, but vigorously defending it.The bird in the gilded cage. If submission is all you have ever known, then submission becomes the norm, the status quo. And people tend to defend the status quo. So, actually we have two stories here in this one small article. Story number one treats us to the welcome news that one more European nation is getting fed up with Islam, getting fed up with their Muslim immigrants incessant demands for more and more cultural concessions, for more and more rights and privileges. They are finally beginning to draw the lines: This is where you end and we begin. This is what you must do to adapt to our society if you want to become a member of our society. This is of course very good news; any news of European societies fighting back against this Muslim onslaught is good news and should be celebrated and encouraged. The second story is a peek behind the veil of Muslim obscurantism. This is the mindset we must understand. This is the enemy we must keep from our shores. This is the evil of ignorance. This is not just another religion, this is the death of the soul. This oppressive cult of darkness deserves no place at our table, deserves no more accommodation and respect in our western world than does Nazism or Fascism. And, hopefully, some of our European cousins are finally waking up to this fact. So, yes, Viva la France! May you succeed in this crucial battle for your national honor. America wishes you well. - rg . |
| Posted: 16 Jul 2008 01:43 PM CDT Note to those calling Clinton supporters "hysterical"-- That is not helping your cause! If anyone thought that Hillary Clinton would be allowed to fade quietly out of the spotlight they severely underestimated her supporters tenacity and drive. Three recent events have fueled their fire and given them a reason to continue fighting. The title comes from a high profile blogger, Taylor Marsh, that used to be called the "hub for everything Hillary" and now titles a piece saying "Hillary Hysteria Mounts" as she describes emails she is receiving which accuse her and others of trying to discount their vote by not backing their call to have an open roll call vote at the Democratic convention. The Rasmussen Report. A Rasmussen report released shows that while Barack Obama holds a a 4 percentage point lead over John McCain with 45 to 41 percent, when "leaners" are included, it's Obama 48 percent and McCain 45 percent, but when McCain is matched up against Hillary Clinton, she would lead McCain by 8 percentage points. However, McCain fares better against Obama than he does against two other prominent Democrats. New York Senator Hillary Clinton leads McCain by eight points, 50% to 42%. Former Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, leads McCain 50% to 43%. The portion emphasized has been the running theme throughout the Clinton supporting blogs since Barack Obama was named the presumptive nominee, and now many are citing this latest Rasmussen report to prove their point. Clinton supporters and The Denver Group. Congressional Quarterly, (CQ) politics ran an article on July 13, 2008, showing that a newly formed group called The Denver Group is actively lobbying Democratic officials to hold and open roll call vote at the Democratic convention which will be held in Denver in August. What they want is Hillary Clinton's name to be listed as a nominee, which can be done since her campaign is suspended but was not ended. The Denver group formed quietly but has gathered strength even before they were highlighted by CQ and other media outlets. One of the people that started the group is what is known as a "Hillraiser", which are contributors that contributed more than $100,000 to the Clinton campaign. With donations for their efforts they have already run an ad in the Chicago Tribune and are preparing to launch a television campaign, all in an effort to force the Democratic National Committee, headed by Howard Dean, into assuring that Clinton's name be in the nomination at the Democratic convention.  "Senator Clinton's name must be put in nomination. Her supporters must be allowed to make speeches on her behalf of her candidacy. There must be an honest roll call vote, not a symbolic one, so superdelegates can cast their votes honestly, for either candidate, as their judgment, conscience and democratic principles dictate." The reasoning behind forcing the superdelegates to stand up and have their open roll call vote be counted is a variety of reasons. One major reason is that Barack Obama did not win enough pledged delegates to assure himself the nomination and it was the superdelegates that selected him. The number that was needed to win the presumptive nominee status was 2,118 and Obama had received 1766.5 while Clinton received 1639.5 and the superdelegates put Obama over the magic number with 463 for Obama and 257 for Clinton. Superdelegates have the option of changing their vote from now until the Democratic convention in August. Another reason stated by a founder of The Denver Groups, Heidi Li Feldman, is, "What they have to do is make it possible for people to say to themselves that there was a fair and correct process." Rumor spreading in Hillary Clinton blogs. There is a fast spreading rumor within the Clinton bloggers, that when following link after link, seems to have started with a blog called Alegre's Corner, which claims that through unconfirmed sources, eight superdelegates have stated that if Clinton is given nomination at the Democratic convention, they will switch their votes from Obama to Clinton. I heard about an interview Will Bower of PUMA did recently, where he said delegates are starting to say they'll vote for Hillary in Denver if the DNC did the right thing and ran an open and fair convention. That means a roll call vote with Hillary's name put into nomination, and on the ballot. Clinton would need 100 superdelegates to switch in order to reach the number needed to obtain the official nomination as the Democratic candidate. That hasn't stopped Clinton bloggers from writing about the claim made by Alegre's Corner though, which was written yesterday and by this morning the rumor had spread to a large number of other Clinton blogs. The questions. Simple questions arise from these recent developments. Given the recent reports about Democrats on the Hill complaining about the Obama campaign, is it at all possible that enough of the superdelegates would switch their votes to Hillary Clinton if she was listed as a nomination and a roll call vote was taken? Considering the growing movement within the Clinton supporter community with 22 percent of her supporters saying they will not vote at all and 17 percent of her supporters claiming they will vote for John McCain, can Obama and the Democrats win the presidential election in November without that large a number of their Democratic voters? If the Obama campaign and the DNC are positive that in August the superdelegates will choose Obama, why not allay the concerns of millions of Clinton supporters and allow the process to play itself out? Last but not least, is this Hillary Hysteria as Taylor Marsh calls it, or is this a legitimate attempt by Clinton supporters to have their voices heard at the Democratic convention, win, lose or draw? You can read more about the history of the Democratic conventions, using wikipedia as just a loose reference point, but it bears noting that since 1972 the nature of conventions changed to being an event that officially ratifies the nominees instead of choosing them. This eliminated the type of dissent that holding a roll call vote with Clinton listed as a nominee would potentially cause. There are pros and cons, no matter what the Democratic National Committee decides to do and refusing to make a final decision and announce it promptly, either way, is simply prolonging the hopes, the anger and encouraging the growth of the Clinton movement at a time when many think the DNC should be helping Obama and Clinton unite the party. . |
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