Barack Obama Elected President!

[Dr. Jay S.W.]

Kevin James is an idoiot!!

[Roman]

Not only that, but ie helps expose every right-wing talking head for the fools that they are.

When you use talking pints, at least Google what you are trying to say, so you know what you're at least talking about. KJ was made to look like a damn fool. Would have loved to have heard his radio show the next day, where he probably said CM was playing the ambush game with him but he got his point across.

Idiot.

[Roman]

Sen. Ted Kennedy apparently has had a stroke.

[Wales2004]

I hope he will be okay.

[Roman]

Great news, great news!

Sen. Kennedy is doing fine and resting after a seizure.

He made phone calls himself cancelling appts.

Great news indeed.

[Roman]

Stephen Colbert is a fool......which is why I love the man!

From Crooks and Liars:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/14/s...d-tirade-video/

[EricaKane70]

I take back what I said about Hillary clinton dropping out of this race. They are doing a ruling on what to do with the MI and FL, if it turns out that she actually gets those delegates Barck may be in trouble. I had no idea that they would be ruling on this at the end of may. So she should at least stay in until the final ruling.imo

[Wales2004]

She's planning on sticking around until the end of the primaries at which time she will see whether she has enough ammo for a convention floor fight. The panel that is deciding what to to about FL and MI is not going to give her what she wants. They want to seat some of the delegates but they're unlikely to seat all of them and even if they did, she wouldn't get all of MI's delegates since they'd most likely split them. The main thing is they want to seat some delegates but still penalize the states for violating party rules.

Here's a portion of an article on the topic (with a link to the full article below):

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/wireStory?id=4868753

[Roman]

From CNN:

May 17, 2008

Florida, Michigan cannot save Clinton

Posted: 04:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) – Michigan and Florida alone can't save Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign.

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states' banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady's best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries.

Even if they were, it wouldn't erase Barack Obama's growing lead in delegates.

The Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, a 30-member panel charged with interpreting and enforcing party rules, is to meet May 31 to consider how to handle Michigan and Florida's 368 delegates.

Last year, the panel imposed the harshest punishment it could render against the two states after they scheduled primaries in January, even though they were instructed not to vote until Feb. 5

or later. Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention, and all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, stripping them of all the influence

they were trying to build by voting early.

But now there is agreement on all sides that at least some of the delegates should be restored in a gesture of party unity and respect to voters in two general election battlegrounds.

Clinton has been arguing for full reinstatement, which would boost her standing. She won both states, even though they didn't count toward the nomination and neither candidate campaigned in

them. Obama even had his name pulled from Michigan's ballot.

The Associated Press interviewed a third of the panel members and several other Democrats involved in the negotiations and found widespread agreement that the states must be punished for stepping out of line. If not, many members say, other states will do the same thing in four years.

"We certainly want to be fair to both candidates, and we want to be sure that we are fair to the 48 states who abided by the rules," said Democratic National Committee Secretary Alice

Germond, a panel member unaligned with either candidate. "We don't want absolute chaos for 2012.

"We want to reach out to Michigan and Florida and seat some group of delegates in some manner, at least most of us do. These are two critical states for the general (election) and the voters

of those states who were not the people who caused this awful conundrum to occur deserve our attention and deserve to be a part of our process and deserve to be at the convention," she said.

Just as Democrats across the country have been divided over which candidate would make the better nominee, most of the panel members also bring personal preferences to the table.

Many are long-standing party officials with close ties to the Clintons. The former first lady has 13 members publicly supporting her, including campaign advisers Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy who

are working to build her delegate count. Eight are openly aligned with Obama. Nine others are officially undeclared.

"We have to have delegates, and they have to be delegations that reflect the opinions of those two states," said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a committee member supporting Clinton. "How

we get there is very different because everyone sees these questions of who it helps and who it hurts. I don't think the formulation has been found that will get around the piece at this

point." But he said a solution is probably possible among the diverse interests.

Because Obama is in the lead for the nomination, his camp heads into the meeting in a position of strength. It is possible the Illinois senator could clinch the nomination by the time the panel

meets if he picks up the pace of superdelegate endorsements in the coming weeks.

But Obama has such a lead that he may be able to afford to be generous and give Clinton most of the delegates. That would help put the issue behind them and help him build goodwill in Michigan

and Florida heading into the November election.

Still, some think the fairest solution is to disregard the primary votes and split the delegations evenly between the two candidates. Yvonne Gates, a member of Nevada who said she is keeping her candidate preference private until after the meeting so her decision won't be questioned, said she isn't sure what position she would support at the meeting but that it must be fair to both

candidates.

"My definition is a 50-50 split is something that is fair," she said. "It cannot be a situation where you give one candidate more votes than the other. In my opinion that wasn't an election when they didn't have a chance to get out and talk to the people of that community."

It's also possible that any vote that recognizes the Michigan and Florida results would legitimize their elections. Clinton has been arguing that she leads in the popular vote, but that's only when both states are included and it is very slim — fewer than 5,000 votes out of 34 million cast.

Her accounting also doesn't include some caucus states that favored Obama and where the popular vote wasn't tallied. The measure of winning the nomination is not the popular vote but whoever can get the majority of delegates — currently 2,026 are needed for the nomination although adding Michigan and Florida back in would change the threshold.

Obama climbed to 1,904 on Friday, according to The Associated Press count. Clinton has 1,719 delegates and is trying to use the popular vote argument to win over more.

Clinton encouraged supporters in an e-mail Friday to sign a message to the DNC asking them to count Michigan and Florida in the May 31 meeting. "I need you to remind them that in the Democratic

Party, we count every vote," her e-mail said.

Fourteen of Clinton's Hispanic supporters in Congress sent a letter to the Rules and Bylaws Committee Friday arguing that disregarding the votes cast by Hispanics, 12 percent of the primary

vote in Florida, could damage the nominee.

So far, Obama's campaign has not been giving direction publicly or privately to panel members. The Clinton campaign's official position has been full reinstatement, but her advisers acknowledge

they are considering an idea before the panel to seat the delegates with half a vote each. Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that they "certainly

might" accept a compromise to seat half the delegates.

If their elections had been held according to party rules, Michigan and Florida would have allocated a total of 313 pledged delegates based on the outcome of the vote. Using the results of the January elections with no votes for Obama from Michigan, Clinton would get 178 to Obama's 67, giving her a 111-vote advantage. As of Friday, she was behind 185 delegates, so that would not catch her up even under that unlikely scenario.

The plans before the committee will be more generous to Obama.

The Michigan Democratic Party has proposed giving 69 of its 128 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama, an advantage of 10 delegates for Clinton.

A proposal from Florida would halve its 185 delegates. From that, Clinton would get 52.5 and Obama 33.5, a 19-delegate advantage for Clinton.

"I think it's a reasonable solution to the problem that was created, and my hope is that we'll be able to get past this and move on," said Allan Katz, an Obama supporter who serves on the

panel but won't be able to vote on any Florida solution because he is from the state.

The committee is not bound to select the proposals offered and has authority to reinstate any number of delegates and divide them in any way.

An open question is how to handle the other type of delegates each state lost — the superdelegates who are party leaders not bound by the outcome of the vote and are free to support whatever candidate they personally choose. Michigan has 29 superdelegates, and Florida 26. A total of nine have declared for Obama, 15 for Clinton and the rest are undeclared.

Barack is not about to give anything away. He will cut the best deal for himself.

The Party is in a perfect position. To give any other candidate a nomination that he has rightly won would throw the entire Party into chaos. It would also hand JM a victory, I feel, in November.

I hope things stand pat. He is showing and has shown that he has grown by leaps and bounds as a presidential candidate, and I think that it can ride him all the way to the WH in January.

[Roman]

What a idiot.

From Crooks and Liars:

The best story I’ve heard this week by far was told today over lunch. Apparently, a co-worker of mine named George listens to the Rush Limbaugh show in his car, and yesterday heard him discussing Barak Obama’s comments about similarities between the recent housing crisis and the lead-up to the Great Depression (link goes to transcript). I imagine the comments were referring to the obvious similarities between those who obtained ridiculous sub-prime loans and those in the 1920s who bought stock they couldn’t afford on margin. However, Limbaugh decided that Obama’s comments were the result of a crazy “liberal education” - and even remarks how “lucky” he is that he didn’t graduate from college, thus allowing him to escape the perils of actual knowledge.

To prove his point, Rush says he did some Google searches for “Great Depression” and then proceeds to attack each of the results as liberal propaganda. Because we all know that college professors teach straight off of Google results pages. So my friend is listening and hears something rather striking… the name of one of our mutual colleagues - Paul Alexander Gusmorino (”The Third!” - I love the way Limbaugh says that).

Limbaugh found among the top results an essay written by Paul, entitled “The Main Causes of the Great Depression,” (link goes to essay). He quotes Paul’s essay and refutes each of its claims, dissecting them as if they were part of a Harvard professor’s lecture on the subject. He doesn’t pull any punches either. “Mr. Gusmorino, you better check Karl Marx and see if you plagiarized him in putting this piece together.”

Ouch. Those words would be harsh if they really were for a Harvard lecturer. But that’s not who wrote this essay. It was my friend who works as a Program Manager at Microsoft.

When he was in 10th grade.

[DevotedToAMC]

They are going to rule on Saturday, May 31st. I don't see them going for splitting the delegates evenly since there would be no point since Obama would still be ahead by the same amount. Halfing the ones alreaady won does not seem exceptional because it saves the other half is not worthy...I can't see any other option other than seating them as is.

You don't know that at all. I see the only feasible option being to seat them as is....cutting them in half for each one won is not going to happen, they aren't going to split them evenly since there would be no point since he would be ahead by the same amount and accepting the ban is pointless since that would make the meeting pointless.

What other compromise, except seating them as is, is there?

[Roman]

Well, whether or not they give her what she wants, she's claiming that she should get the nom. They should just split them and call it a day. That seems fair, given the FACT that she signed the same document that he did, and now wants to go back on her word and seat delegates that she agreed broke the rules. I do agree with you, though. Edwards endorsing Obama is a sign that they want this over and they want to start pulling the party back together. Obama also handled himself very well against that garbage McCain and Bush tried two days ago. He almost relished in it.

He is prepared to give them the battle they want,and when he does, he just may come out on top.

[DevotedToAMC]

Agree. What Bush said was out of line

[Wales2004]

No I don't. I made a deduction based on the content of the article and the sentiment expressed in it. By the same token you don't know that cutting them in half for at least MI is not going to happen. What you see as pointless may not be how they see it.

You're assuming that this whole thing is about deciding who the nominee is but it's quite possible that this is more about making sure that each state is represented at the DNC despite the fact that the two states in question violated party rules. It's inappropriate, IMO, for the nomination to be decided by giving states that violated the rules all of their delegates back because it severely taints the nominating process to do so. You break the rules, you suffer the consequences. There weren't any mitigating circumstances that prompted them to violate the rules and no one was duped into it nor were the candidates pressured into signing the agreements regarding either FL or MI.

None if your definition of feasible and compromise equals giving Hilary Clinton what she wants. On the other hand, if you believe in abiding by the rules then none would be seated or if you believe in penalizing but allowing some representation then a portion would be seated.

There is no point to having a rule if you're not going to enforce it. That's the bottom line.

I'm still waiting for an answer to my question on what it is Bill Clinton did for black Americans that should prompt them to give him a second chance or however it is you phrased it. What did he do to merit it?

[DevotedToAMC]

I think his record for respect amongst the black community as president speaks for itself...he was passionate towards their civil rights so much that Maya Angelou called him "the first black president"