Saturday: While We Wait…

The New York Times is still reporting that Hillary is going to take the job of SOS although there is no official word from her office. Unlike Tweety Matthews, I’m not reading anything nefarious in the tea leaves regarding the delay of this announcement. Powerful people can set their own terms to some extent and she is probably working out the details that balance what is right for her with what is right for the country. It is as appropriate for Hillary to do this as it would be for any man. You don’t accept a job offer if you’re not going to advance your career and the best time to get what you want is at the beginning. She’s not being stubborn, capricious or exercising her feminine prerogative. She is acting on her best behalf, but with considerably more credibility on foreign policy than Tom Daschle who has suddenly discovered his passion for healthcare reform after decades of work on intelligence matters.

So we wait.

In the meantime, here are some other items that might sthwike your fancy:

• John West of 300 Delegates wrote a moving piece about what he witnessed in Denver as he was trying to accumulate those delegate signatures.  In Fair Reflection’s Absence, John writes:
  

  NOT ONE PERSON who voted for Hillary during the primaries/caucuses in American Samoa, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware had their vote reflected in the roll call tally by the delegates they elected for this sole purpose. The pledged delegates for Hillary in these states unanimously changed their votes from Hillary to Obama believing they did the voters right by supporting unity and following Hillary’s lead. Was this a fair reflection of the sentiments of the voters when they cast their ballots for Hillary during their primary/caucus?

  To this day, I can’t think back to that moment in Denver without intense anger when my governor took MY vote and the votes of millions of New Jerseyans who voted overwhelmingly for Clinton and gave them *unanimously* to Obama.  If he thinks my white hot anger over that is going to fade over time, he’s sorely mistaken.  Obama and his droogs thought of only one thing during the primaries: winning the nomination away from Hillary.  Obama is not about changing anything.  He is about maintaining the status quo for the Villagers.  That is what Jon Corzine rewarded with our votes.  Honestly, I have never seen a governor behave so disrespectfully towards his voters in the years I have lived here.  Even Christie Todd Whitman was better than this.  But Corzine is a Goldman Sachs guy so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised as to where is interests were, ie, not with his state’s residents.  Well, I intend to bring this arrogant smack to our face up every time Obama screws our state over in the next 4 years.  And for us, that’s going to start happening pretty soon because many of us work for the financial industry that is shedding jobs like crazy these days.  When the townships start hurting for money that is funded almost exclusively by property taxes on those houses of unemployed MBAs, I’m going to be right there, reminding our Governor that he handed our votes to a guy who took off for Berlin during the summer instead of planninn to do something about the financial market that showed signs of an imminent collapse.  If you want to blame the severity of the upcoming recession on someone, look no further than Jon Corzine.

• Heidi Li recently attended an event at Baruch College in October called Politics, Pundits and Polls: Election 2008.  I haven’t viewed this video of the event yet but it should be interesting.  Check it out.
• The New Work Times writes about how difficult it is for consumers to analyze costs versus benefits in this new economic landscape in Failing Home Economics.  The lady with the cauliflower dilemma has her own blog called EconoWhiner with helpful hints, plus tea and sympathy, for surviving the recession.

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NO WE WON’T: Michele Thomas and John Siegel

ACK!  I was so busy cleaning my fridge I forgot to post this.  Please join Sheri Tag tonight on NO WE WON’T as she discusses the delegate fiasco with Michele Thomas of 300 Delegates and John Siegel (the cowboy hat guy in the Audacity of Democracy trailer).  That’s tonight at 8:00PM EST (that’s like, NOW!!!) on PUR (PUMA United Radio).

The 300 Speak. Ha-OOO, Ha-OOO, Ha-OOO!

This just came down the tubez tonight:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE More Information:
August 1, 1008  John West c: 312-399-4458
gardens@jwlandscapes.com
Supporting documents attached
Sue Castner h: 503-203-1027
WomenVote2008@gmail.com

CLINTON DELEGATES SAY NOMINATING PETITION IS THE
KEY TO PARTY UNITY

For weeks, rumors have been circulating about whether or not Hillary Clinton’s name will be on
the ballot at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.  As a presidential candidate with
close to 2,000 delegates, many are wondering why placing the senator’s name into nomination
would even be questioned.  At a finance event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC in
June, Barack Obama confirmed that such a possibility was, in fact, being negotiated behind
closed doors.  This revelation stunned many Clinton supporters.

“The path to party unity runs through Denver,” explained Daniel Kagan, a Clinton delegate from
Colorado.  “Whether this convention begins and ends with the party unified depends upon
whether the name ‘Hillary Clinton’ appears on the nominating ballot.”

A grassroots effort has been established by a group of Clinton delegates and volunteers to collect
300 names to be placed on a nominating petition.  The petition will be submitted to Nancy
Pelosi, Permanent Chair for the 2008 Convention in accordance with DNC rules.  These
signatures must be submitted before the commencement of the Convention on August 25, 2008.
Petition signatures must be notarized and submitted in writing.

“We fully expect to gather more than enough names to be able to submit this petition to Speaker
Pelosi,” said Michele Thomas, a volunteer working to organize signatures.  “These 300
individuals will make history – being part of the process that has been followed by honorable
men and women for decades.”

While Senator Clinton has neither supported nor discouraged this effort and has enthusiastically
endorsed Senator Obama, she did mention the nominating process and the role that delegates do
play at a recent event in California.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8gdU_1MM44)

Certified delegates interested in having their names included on the petition should email
HRC300delegates@yahoo.com.

#  #  #

300 Delegate Petition is not affiliated with any campaign.

There is a separate supporting document,  delegatesupportingdocs11, with information related to the rules by which nominations may be made at the convention.

To you delegates out there, we are with you 100%.  We appreciate all that the “300” are doing.  You are true party loyalists and understand that in order to make an omlette, you gotta break some eggs.  In the past eight years, we have seen instance after instance where the people who had a chance to do the right thing chose political expediency and “going along to get along”.  The result has been a disaster, starting with the Supreme Court selecting George Bush as president.  It was the path that was taken that made all of the difference in many thousands of people’s lives from 9/11, to the Iraq War, to Hurricane Katrina.  In so many cases, a choice was put before a person of power whether to allow a process to go to completion without rushing it, to alerting the proper authorities of a serious threat, to telling the truth about military intelligence, to spilling the beans that while people were drowning, help was being withheld while the White House played politics.  In so many instances, the persons in question gave into temptation or laziness or threats.  I never thought I’d actually be writing this sentence with any meaning but, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.”  If a Democrat has any chance of winning this fall, then the voters who cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton must be heard and recognized.  You are my delegates, our delegates, our 300.  Do not be afraid to do the right thing.

Saturday: Riverdaughter to the Media

Dear Media,

It’s been awhile. I don’t watch you guys anymore and I’ve advised many of my readers to abstain as well, although, I am aware of more than a few backsliders (Pat Johnson, I’m talking to you). We know what you’re up to and we’re not paying any attention to you anymore. We are listening to our consciences. And our consciences have a message for you: This nomination process is bigger than one person.

Hillary Clinton is our champion because she is the strongest ally of the American people. We 18,000,000 who voted for her represent a diverse population of both old and young, working class and professional, college educated and educated by life, black, white, latino, gay and straight. We are everyman. We voted for her in decisive numbers in virtually every big D state and swing state and with our votes, she whupped Obama’s @$$ in West Virginia and Kentucky long after you called the race for her opponent. Now, after you slavishly reported his every bowel movement during his European Grand Tour, we see that he is sinking in the polls.

Buy a clue, media, we don’t want Obama. After two months of fawning attention, he is slipping behind because time is his enemy. It gives the American people an opportunity to see him as nothing more than a posturing empty suit, a schmoozer of the nth degree and an opportunist who will turn his back on the people who got him this far. Witness the pathetic letter in The Nation written by the latest group he has screwed over– affluent and pretentious liberals. Hey, they had it coming to them. We tried to warn them but they purged us from their blogs when we started harshing their Obama mellow earlier this year.

But enough about the Kool-Aid drinkers who want their virginity back. I’m talking to the media here and there are some things you guys ought to know:

• We know that the media is not our friend. You gave us the Iraq War and two terms of Bush. Frankly, nothing you say has any credibility anymore.
• We are grateful that McCain is coming down on Obama’s @$$ over the race card. This is not “nasty” or “negative” politics. None of us wanted to be called racists, especially when our decisions were not motivated by race. It is a personal insult. I’m going to continue to use words like arrogant, cocky, snippy and schmoozer because they describe Obama perfectly. No one is going to get me to shut up and run over me because they choose to use race as a weapon. Believe me when I tell you that if Obama continues to go this route and he is nominated in spite of our best efforts, he will suffer a landslide defeat in November. Voters will get even in the voting booth. No one can insult us like that and get away with it.
• About that nomination, you probably don’t pay attention to such things but the states that will win the Democrat the White House in November, specifically, MI, FL, NY, NJ, CA, MA, AZ, TX, PA, OH, and several others, spent mega- millions of dollars holding primaries that you in the media scoffed at after the RBC Hearing result in May. We believe that the vote was rigged and that Fl and MI were withheld in order to deprive our states of the critical mass of delegates that Hillary needed to win. We believe that Obama stole votes from her in MI and as a result, STOLE the primary. It has been clear to some of us since the day after Feb. 5, that the DNC has used all of its efforts to prevent Hillary from winning. And if that is true, then the party has committed fraud on its voters and their state treasuries by conducting sham primaries it knew would never count. Under these circumstances, the party can never be united.

Now, you can continue to push Obama down our throats 24/7 and you can continue to publish and propagate falsehoods about whether Hillary wants her name in nomination. But it makes no difference to US what you say. This convention and nomination is about OUR right to be heard. It is our right to settle the score with the DNC, who thought we would just fall into line while they try to make us irrelevent. Well, we’re not going to do that.

It doesn’t matter what you say or broadcast or publish or spin. There are 18 million of us out here who don’t have to listen to that anymore. We can just ay NO DEAL. You can castigate us and call us names (like, what’s left in the arsenal? Pedophiles? Vampires?) or put us on mute in the news. We will still say NO DEAL. David Axelrod can make us the hot new paraiahs and make us the target of insults and violence. But we don’t need to even identify ourselves. 18 million voters blend into the general population remarkably well. All we need to do is say NO DEAL.

The DNC knows we’re out here. They’re starting to get nervous. They’re starting to use you to plant misinformation and demoralize us. But we see right through this and not only are we not demoralized, we are actually kinda psyched about it. They are getting worried. Good.

Our movement is viral and growing. We ask for one thing: That Hillary’s name be submitted for nomination at the convention in order to honor all of the voters, the hard working American men and women, the states that paid for the primaries and the Democratic process. We intend to continue to hold the DNC’s feet to the fire until we get her name in nomination in a fair, open and authentic process in Denver.

In the whole scheme of things, the media is just getting in the way.

Sincerely,

Riverdaughter

Message to Hillary Delegates: Do your duty.