Open Thread: Quiet and Thoughtful Night

Conflucians seem pensive tonight. Myiq2xu gifted us with a thoughful historical essay that took all that we have been talking about here for the past few months, gave it a historical context and tied it all together clearly and concisely. We can’t accept what the so-called “Democratic leaders” are doing to us. We won’t accept it. It’s just too much. We’re fed up with settling for crumbs and being offered third-rate candidates.

The PUMA movement has made so much progress already. Earlier today Riverdaughter wrote about the very real divisions in the Party–with even the blogger boys expressing some disappointment in the presumptuous nominee. Their mad crush is starting to wear off, and they are realizing their dream man is just an ordinary guy with lots of flaws. Then Gary and Maum shared more of their terrific videos from Unity, NH. Next they may go to an Obama gospel event in NC. With our heroes present, there could be some unexpected fireworks.

We don’t know what will happen between now and the end of August or between the end of August and November. If we just keep on putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one day at a time, our organic grass roots movement will continue to grow and bear fruit. We are part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes it feels thrilling, sometimes we feel thoughtful, like tonight.

So what’s happening out there? Well, the Washington Post discovered that Barack Obama bought his dream mansion with a very big loan with a discount interest rate from a bank that has donated quite a bit to his campaign. Hmmm…interesting. Meanwhile thousands of Americans are unable to pay their mortgages and are losing their homes.

Cartoonist AnnTalnaes has a very clever comment on Obama’s recent “transformational” approach to church state separation. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a sad, but necessary piece the the guardian, Destroying Hillary.

Commenter Parentofed points us to a wonderful story about Hillary’s appearance in Syracuse, NY today. There is video as well. It’s nice to see Hillary out and about again.

Ooooh, here’s good one. MABlue recommended this piece by the WSJ that says out loud what us PUMAs have been thinking for awhile now. Obama’s running for Bush’s third term.

The folks at Corrente are planning a “symposium” to discuss a manifesto for blogosphere 2.0:

tomorrow, Thursday, at 5:00 PM, where we’ll share a draft Manifesto on this very point — and Big Tent Democrat has very kindly agreed to post and moderate for, because this thing of ours is bigger than we are, way bigger even than The Mighty Corrente Building.

Hmm…sound like something Conflucians might want to participate in.

You Down With O.P.P.?

Imagine falling in love with someone who is already in another relationship.  They tell you how bad that relationship is.  They tell you earnestly how it’s you they really love, not the other person.  They promise you that soon the two of you will be together forever.

But they say can’t leave that relationship right now.  They tell you it’s financial, or for the children, or because they are afraid.  So they sneak out and come see you, enjoy some good hot nasty lovin’ and whisper sweet nothings in your ear.  Then they leave.

They keep saying soon, maybe next month, but next month never comes.  There is always some new excuse, some new reason, some new broken promise.  If you have ever been in this situation, you know how much it hurts.  But if you have ever had a friend in this situation, you would tell them the obvious truth:

“They’re just screwing you!”

Wednesday: Across the Divide

The party sure is divided.  Yep, I’m thinking Grand Canyon territory.  The party loyalists, their eyes glazed and glittering with feverish intensity, are screaming UNITY with an urgency that belies the reality of that claim.  Witness Debbie Wasserman-Schultz last week on Larry King Live insisting that Obama addressed the Women’s Congressional Caucus and everything was fine now.  There were air kisses and make-up sex and no, no one had an orgasm but they sure did come close!

As the Cry of the PUMA video says in it’s final frame “Simply proclaiming UNITY doesn’t make it so”.  And may I say something to the party leaders that I’m sure they will ignore, because why start paying attention now?  It isn’t Hillary’s job to unify the party. I know, I know, this comes as a shock to some of you but it’s true.  Hillary is not the presumptive nominee.  If you wanted her to unite the party, something that would have been a piece of cake for her, you shouldn’t have *selected* the guy.  You should have let the election process play out without a year’s worth of interference.

Hillary *could* just sit out the rest of the primary season and work on paying off her campaign debt.  Just like Joe Biden and Chris Dodd and John Edwards, nothing more should be asked of her but her support.  There is no need to drag her along on some dog and pony show where she is forced to ask her reluctant and adamant supporters to vote for Obama.  Either we will or we won’t. The party is behaving like evangelists who will not stop trying to convert us in spite of years of persistence and emotional blackmail and shaming and every other trick in the book. We got the message.  You can stop now.  Some of us LIKE being heathens. If we’re not going to paradise with you, maybe it’s because the thought of spending an eternity with fundamentalist evangelicals makes us physically ill.

But whatever.  It looks like some of the blogosphere are starting to figure out what’s causing the rift, some more cogently than others.  For example:

• Did you know that Markos is a racist??  Yeah!  Yesterday, he decided to withhold his maxxed out contribution to Obama. (No, I am not providing a link) He claims that he hasn’t given a dime to any of the candidates during the primaries, no doubt to preserve the credibility of his famed impartiality (snort!).  But yesterday, Markos realized that Obama’s turn to the right was unacceptable.  There are a lot of things he could overlook, like throwing working class, elderly, women, gays, asians, latinos and Muslims under the bus and using Rovian campaign techniques to destroy Bill and Hillary’s characters when it comes to race.  No, those things were OK.  But when Obama shoved the Dirty F%&@ing Hippies under there, that’s when Kos blew the whsitle.  Well, we won’t say we told you so but we *did* mention on more than one occasion in the comments that Obama was going to have to turn to the right after he snagged the nomination but the Kossacks would have none of it.  And he will probably have to continue going right now because he’s on a bit of a slippery slope.  The more he goes right, the more votes he loses in his base, the more he has to go right.  That’s because he doesn’t have any core Democratic Principles to begin with to know where to stop.  That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you all this time, Kos, but you and your “shrieking band of adolescent zealots” just keep calling us racists.  You might as well send the $2300 bucks.  After all, as the party leaders have told us, “Where else are you going to go?”  Oh, and look for your “Now that you’re a Racist” welcome package in the mail with brochures on our program and coupons for free gifts.  It will arrive in a white envelope.
• Speaking of “Where Else Are You Going to Go?” go read Anglachel’s brilliant piece on the subject titled “No Where Else To Go”.  I’m starting to get the feeling that the Clinton supporters are being punished by the Stevensonians because so many of the working class defected to the Republicans during the 80’s and 90’s.  Nevermind that the rest of us didn’t or that they have come out of their trance now and want a true Democrat this year.  They ain’t gonna get one.  The party elite is determined to hold us down and force Obama on us and they are filling the void of the country club voters that the Republicans deserted in their quest for world domination through movement onservatism.  For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s over yet.  There are still two months and a lot could happen between now and then especially if we make a lot of noise and Obama keeps alienating people like Kos.  For sure the swing voters he is courting right now don’t want anymore moralizing on patriotism, faith and race.  They just want to be able to fill their gas tanks.  Go read the whole piece.  Well worth it.
• Heidi Li Feldman is trying to give the DNC one last chance to heal the divide before we take our votes and walk.  She has set up The Denver Group whose goal is to persuade the party to conduct the convention in a fair, open and transparent manner.  The means to do this are through advocacy for the millions of voters whose votes need to be honored at the convention.  This may require buying media so The Denver Group is accepting contributions for ads.  Please take a look and if you have the means, contribute to this worthy cause.

The blue PUMA is actually the old logo for my alma mater’s mascot, the Pitt Panther from the University of Pittsburgh.  I completely forgot that the panther is really another name for PUMA.  It must be in my blood.  And remember, JustSayNoDeal,

Got a Caucus Story? Know Someone Who Does?

Many of you have related horrible caucus stories in the comment sections of this blog.  If you have a story, please share it with someone who will do something with it.  I believe this has to get out.  It has to get out that Obama’s pledged Delegate lead can, by no modern standards of elections, be calling legitimate.

Here is one person who is compiling a lot of the stories.

 

Caucus Stories? Please reply now! Any first hand stories about IOWA, Colorado, Nevada, or anywhere. Hello everyone, I was a volunteer with the Hillary Clinton campaign from January to June. I went to Texas and had a great time. I am standing with Hillary until the end of the convention in August through www.justsaynodeal.com and other groups. I have decided to work with several Hillary supporters who are doing an investigation of the caucuses. The Clinton campaign collected all the testimony and information but the media wasn’t interested at the time.  I feel strongly that the superdelegates and the American public should know about the rampant and flagrant cheating that was perpetrated by the Obama camp throughout the caucus process. Since he only won by 130 delegates, mostly won in caucuses I think this is an important area to investigate. We have to finish it way before the convention, hopefully as soon as possible. With your permission, we will be providing some of the information we collect to a Congressional investigator and will also use it to make a video. Anything you can email to me would be helpful! Thank you , Larry  larry.music@att.net

 

New England Patriot

Recently, the Supreme Court overturned a law in the District of Columbia that created a complete ban of hand guns there.  Even if you don’t own a gun or even if you would never own a gun, please try for just one moment to look at the world from another person’s perspective.  If you do own a gun, you won’t have to pretend.  Try to imagine you are a gun owner.  You might enjoy hunting, and you are probably interested in ensuring the protection of your family.

Now think about the implication of the DC hand gun ban.  How do you think you would feel about that?  I used to think people in the NRA were sort of nuts to get really worked up over things like wait times for hand-guns, or background checks.  I would argue that those things are not incredibly restrictive, and don’t keep people from owning a gun.  Their retort would always be that those laws were steady erosions of the second ammendment.  I would think they were sort of hyper-sensitive.

What a difference a law makes.  If I imagine myself a gun owner, I would have really been looking  closely at the law in DC.  You can’t argue that the governent isn’t going to take away your guns, because that is exactly what they were doing for 30 years.  We shouldn’t have dismissed their concerns, but because I’m not a gun owner I never knew what they were doing there.  I don’t subscribe to the NRA, and really never knew about the ban until Tom Palmer filed his suit, and the case made its way to the highest court of our land.

Barack Obama recently made a statement about the SCOTUS judgement overturning the ban.  What do you guess his position is now?  He was never for the ban.  However, guess how he felt just earlier this year?  Did you guess he was for it?  Watch the clip below, and you will notice something amazing.  Obama manages to be both for the ban and against restriction all at the same time.  It is classic Obama.  Say something really incomprehensible, so later you can pull a WORM ( What Obama Really Meant). 

What is really a feat of sophistry is the reasoning that allows him to be both for a ban and against one at the same time.  He seems to be making the argument that there are different sets of rules for the urban dweller as opposed to the rural one. 

Very bizarre.

 

 

Here is another protester from the Unity sham rally in NH.  I think not being able to nail down Obama on his real opinion on second amendment rights might be making him a little uneasy about supporting the presumptuous nominee.  After having met him, I thought he was someone I would like to have on my side.