Ron Paul on Barack Obama

Just read down my blog and you'll see that at one point I was torn between Ron Paul and Barack Obama. I chose Obama (being the Democrat I am), and I haven't looked back. But I still believe Ron Paul is a great American, who would make a great President. He is intelligent, and understands this world, probably better than Obama does. But I personally just felt Obama would make a better President, regardless.

Anyway, Paul made some comments on Obama the other day, and I thought they were great. Give them a listen:

The Path to Victory!

Obama has done it!! I'm so excited! And not only that, but just today, the Democratic National Committee has committed to not accepting donations or money from PACs or lobbyists! Simply amazing! Obama has been the "unofficial" nominee for only a few days, and he's already affected the direction of the national Democratic party! How sweeet is that??

I've grown so tired of the Hillary show. The fact that she upstaged Obama's victory by not conceding was absurd! But I'm getting over it now that the "buzz" on her being VP is dying off. I hope Obama doesn't choose her!! PLEASE OBAMA!! heh.. But Obama is talking up "something new", which I think signals that Hillary is NOT going to be his nominee.

On the McCain front, it's awesome seeing all the "remix" videos of his green speech on YouTube. They're freakin hilarious!! I still can't believe he said that we need to give bottles of hot water to dehydrated babies!! wtf?? and for him to actually say he was running for Bush's third term? Who planned that one? You couldn't ask for a better sound bite!! hahaha.. Love it!! :)

Go donate to Obama and the DNC!

From my dad...

Kids: This is a sad commentary. My late friend Eddie Hall was a WWII vet who happened to be a black man (born and reared in Sacramento). Eddie had a high school education and a wealth of practical, worldly wisdom. One day we were talking about the internal politics of the “black community” in Sacramento and he told me that generally speaking, the most corrupt political leaders in the black community were the pastors. He said you can tell which ones they were because the always dressed real fancy and had nice cars. His theory was that powerful “white folks” bought off the pastors to keep the black folks in line. In that spirit, Eddie claimed the pastors would lead them out on proverbial wild goose chases, instead of doing the homework needed to advance their community economically and socially.

Eddie’s been dead about 7 years. I haven’t thought of Eddie for a long time, but when I saw the footage of Rev. Wright’s assault on Obama’s candidacy and he made his aside about a book that he will publish later this year, the light went off. The question the bloggers need to find out is, who is going to publish the book and how much of an advance payment have they already made to Wright.

When you have the answers to those two questions, you will know why Wright is trying to bring Obama down. It may be that Judas Iscariot has nothing on Rev. Wright. I suspect it’s a publishing company owed by our fascist friend Rupert Murdoch. He has a long history of trying to corrupt politics through book deals (for example, former speakers Wright and Gingrich). Uncovering this information quickly may save us from Hillary-gate redux. There’s about 4 days to do it in. Any suggestions on how it could be uncovered?

Add it up

Ed Rendell was on Meet the Press last Sunday making the argument that what matters most is winning the big States, which Tim Russert called a "strong argument." I just saw Christ Mathews on Hardball making the position that Super-delegates should go for whichever candidate wins the popular vote, and disregard the delegate count. This is typical pro-Clinton news-spin, that's all over NBC (save for Keith Olbermann who says it like it is).

But let's just take the numbers as they stand for the "big" States so far:

State	Obama	Clinton
California	2,126,000	2,553,000
Texas	1,358,000	1,459,000
New York	698,000	1,003,000
Illinois	1,302,000	662,000
Ohio	982,000	1,212,000
Georgia	704,000	330,000
New Jersey	492,000	603,000
Virginia	627,000	350,000
Washington	354,000	316,000
Total	8,643,000	8,487,000

---------

California 167 . . . . . . 203
Texas 99 . . . . 94
New York 93 . . . . 139
Illinois 104 . . . 49
Ohio 66. . . 75
Georgia 60 . . . 27
New Jersey 48 . . . . 59
Virginia 54 . . . . 29
Washington 53 . . . 25

Total 744 . . . 700


So as it stands now, for the "big" States, Obama has won MORE people, and MORE delegates. So according to their argument, Obama has won both categories as a whole, and should be the winner.

Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten us into

What to do about Florida & Michigan? It's all the talk of the Democratic party these days. The conundrum is centering around Hillary's inability to close ranks on Obama's delegate lead. Her only hope is to try to force the primaries of Michigan and Florida to count. Of course this would only favor her, and give her a boost past Obama. But is it fair to count an election where in one case, the only name on the ballot is Hillary Clinton, and in the other, people were told not to bother voting because it wouldn't count?

In Michigan, the rules were not to file to put your name on the ballot, and not to campaign there. Hillary, while not campaigning there, got her name on the ballot. No other Democratic candidate did. So to count this election would be akin to the likes of Saddam Heussein in his last election, or Fidel Castro in his. Having only one name on the ballot doesn't mean the person with the most votes, (or the only person with votes), is who the voters really wanted. It was their only choice. That's not democracy.

I guess you could work out a deal where Obama gets all the people who voted for "Uncommitted", but I'm sure some of them were John Edwards or Kucinich supporters, and they'd balk at the idea that Obama would get their vote. So the only fair solution, besides sticking to the rules set out for it not to count, would be for a re-vote. It seems the best and easiest way would be mail-in ballots.

In Florida, we have a slightly different scenario. All the major candidates were on the ballot, but nobody (excluding a private function with Hillary) campaigned there. In fact, the turnout in Florida was one of the lowest percentage turnout so far in the primaries. People were told not to bother voting because it wouldn't count. So does that sound fair to suddenly turn around and count them? It seems like to do so would disenfranchise a large number of voters who would then feel like they were hoodwinked in to not voting.

Again, short of sticking to the rules and not counting Florida at all, the only fair solution is to hold another re-vote. Again, the easiest way to do that would be mail-in ballots.

Of course this could all be avoided if Hillary would just admit she has been defeated. We could get on with the battle against John McCain, and not risk our chance of winning the White House. But the Clinton's have never been ones to play fair, and let things die. And now I'm beginning to understand the reason why the Republican's HATED Bill Clinton so much.

Hillary is a monster, and we all know it. She is risking the White House for the Democrats by playing dirty to defeat Obama. She still believes if she injures Obama badly enough, she can clinch the nomination. But by doing so, she will have turned off so many of the new voters that have been brought in to this election by Obama. And I'm sure she's okay with that, as long as she believes she can still defeat McCain.

The problem that Hillary doesn't want to face, is that she's not going to win. And, like George W Bush, she doesn't want to see the reality, but instead futilely fight on. Even if she wins Florida and Michigan, like Texas and Ohio, her margins would most likely be too small to give her any net gain. And by the time the DNC figures out how to fix this mess, any "momentum" she might claim from those victories will be too late for anyone to notice except maybe some of her most die-hard super-delegates.

Give up Hillary. Save some face, and keep the Clinton legacy somewhat intact. If you play nice now, maybe YOU could be on the ticket as VP.

A New Hope

My life is pretty crazy right now.. a lot of personal stuff going on. So I haven't posted much lately.

So this is likely to be my final post before this Tuesday's Primary in California. I don't know what to say anymore, but that we need Obama. America needs Obama. I need Obama. He is inspiration. This video, I think, sums it all up.

http://www.dipdive.com/

Vote Obama.

Obama surges! Paul gains!

It's been an exciting week! From the Iowa caucuses: Obama destroyed Clinton and Edwards. Since that time, it's become readily apparent that the Democratic ticket is likely to be Obama/Edwards. Edwards has become the attack wing for Obama. He's taken her on directly in attacks that have hurt her, while leaving Obama still relatively clean. They both talk about removing the lifers from Washington politics and changing the system that is broken. It couldn't be any more apparent.

Now New Hampshire: Obama surges past Clinton! Clinton cires. As always happens when you attack, Edwards goes down with Clinton. But I'm sure he's happy to be the VP on a winning ticket this time.

Go Obama!!

And on the Ron Paul side, Ron Paul takes 10% in Iowa, ahead of Guiliani, who had only 3%. Yet Fox still excludes him from their debate. No worries, Paul just buys an hour of airtime right before the debates! haha.. go suck on that Faux News!

Go Ron Paul!

So if you're a Democrat, vote Obama! And if you're a Republican, vote Ron Paul! And if you're an independent, go google/youtube Obama and Paul, and figure out who you like best.

Barack Obama or Ron Paul?

So I'm a progressive liberal, (if you can't tell). I've been supporting Barack Obama in the Democratic primary. He's been preaching change, and has a record to show that he believes what he is talking about, and will do something about it (unlike Hillary who will continue the status quo). And he's been speaking out against war and how to deal peaceably with the world.

I'm also pessimistic about our government. I've known for quite some time that our government is broken. We have a corporate controlled (fascist) government, run largely by the military-industrial complex. We spend something like 60-70% of our annual federal budget on defense. At the same time Bush is pouring billions of our yet-to-be-collected dollars into wars in the middle east while our national needs aren't being met. We have bridges collapsing and health care for poor kids being vetoed.

I've long felt that our federal government needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the foundation up. The foundation laid out by our founding father's was a good one. It's what we've built on top of it that needs be torn down. And soon!

And that's where Ron Paul comes in to play. I know that he is a Libertarian at heart, meaning he believes in freedom and liberty over government control. That extends to everything, even those government programs like helping to provide healthcare to poor kids. While I think that having those types of programs is good for this country, I think that my feelings for what is right with our government is being far overshadowed by what is wrong with our government. And so the idea of having a president who works to cut down our government, however he can, is appealing to me. I just want to be sure the first programs he focuses on cutting are not social ones, but military ones.

Ron Paul has said that the US needs to pull all of its forces from abroad, and focus on ourselves. If we eliminate the need to police the world, like he says, then our needs to spend billions on the military drops. That's the military-industrial complex being slashed, which is a great thing!

After Ron Paul has had 4 or 8 years of hacking our federal government to iddy-biddy pieces, then we can refocus on building it again. Once the bloat is gone, we can build those programs that we feel we need for our society, not ones our military industries say we need. Not ones that corporate interests say we need. Ones we actually need. That's the point where the Democrats should be in control.

So it's coming time that I have to decide. Obama is still my Democrat. But Ron Paul is only slightly behind him on my list of favorites. And I only have a short time before I must change my voter registration to "Decline to State" in order to vote for Ron Paul. Otherwise I'm locked in to Obama. What to do....