Politics and Hillary

When it comes to politics and your name is on the ballot there is no female or male distinction on the actual ballot. Democrat, Republican, or Independent, those are the top three initials that will appear next to the candidates name. In politics your life, your history, and your entire past is luggage that you bring to the ballot whether you think it is fair or not. No topic in your public life is out of bounds. No political candidate for President should ever be immune from this process.

There is an inkling of fear in the MSM when it comes to confronting Hillary Clinton on the issues and pushing her just too far on the issues. Voters might see the reporting as bashing all woman and it is not. In some circles it is labeled as hitting a woman and abuse of the candidate but in politics it is and should be all about facing the hard questions even if she is a woman. There is also the thought out there since the near sob fest in New Hampshire that Hillary is out of bounds for the tough line of questions lest she cry. That is bull and if you think she can not face the same questions as Obama and Edwards then you are living a lie. A MSM politically generated lie.

Any candidate running for the highest office of the land is going to be vetted by the press and that is how we as a people decide who we will vote for. No matter what political party you are running from the bashing will come from every corner and it should be expected by all of the candidates. All of them need to be vetted and tears or near tears is not something that gives you a fast pass or fast track to the White House.

If the MSM is going to give Hillary a pass then they should do the same for the Black guy too! God forbid we offend African Americans on asking Barack Obama about issues concerning race relations in America. I personally can not speak for Senator Obama but he would probably tell the questioner that fear of your neighbor simply because of the color of their skin is wrong. Racism is not about the color of ones skin but the thought process and stereo type in your own mind. Get over it. Get real and hug a person that just happens to be black.

We can not piss off the Evangelical’s as well. Asking any candidate that puts God over country is way out of bounds and Huckabee gets a free get out of jail card. So do the parolee’s that he let loose on Arkansas. Forgive and forget or is it forgive and let them kill again?

If Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to run for President of the United States then her entire record and everything she has done that is good or bad is fair play in the press and in the bloggosphere. This is politics, this is America, this is where the election process goes and the people decide who will be the next President by asking tough questions and you better have a damn good response if you want thier vote.

Hypocrisy in reporting on all of the candidates can be looked at from many angles by the readers of the mains stream media. People are not idiots and soft questions to any candidate will be viewed as soft reporting and thus we have the bloggosphere. Real opinions from real people that speak from the heart. No canned speeches here from this political writer by any means.

Hillary Clinton has taken this political campaign for President out of the context of what it should be. The Clinton political machine lives and its latest plan is setting back womans equality back to the Archie Bunker days. Don’t attack my positions because I am a woman, I am fragile, but I want to be President of the most powerful nation in the world is wrong. That is not the route she should take simply because it weakens woman all across America that have fought so hard to get woman to where they are today. Politics and near tears do not mix. Either you are the toughest woman on the stage or you are the weakest link of American politics. Only Hillary can answer that question and the media needs to ask whatever questions we as voters might think important for the continuation of the Presidency.

Papamoka

Cross posted at Michael Linn Jones and Bring IT ON!

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Biden Lacks Celebrity but has Stamina and Policy

While the cash machines of Hillary and Obama are dumping millions of dollars at the media houses of Iowa television and radio stations Joe Biden is taking a walk to the corner lunch. While the television bombardment of both political parties gears up over the next few weeks I can actually forecast the television repair shop escalation in business as more than just a foot goes through the living room boob tube.

Over the past few weeks I have been writing about the glorification of candidates from both parties by the media based on the amount of money they might derive from the candidates. Joe Biden is not a money made candidate or a glorified rock star in politics. Joe is just Joe if you ask the folks on the train home from the capitol every night. Joe fly’s coach to Iowa and not on a sponsored by this company or that corporation private jet or plane. Joe prefers interviews in public with real reporters rather than press meeting statements.

Joe may not have a super star style but he does have what it takes to be President. He has humility, he has experience and he has the heart of the American people in his hopes and dreams for tomorrow.

Margery Eagan of WTKK Talk Radio and the Boston Herald had the chance to actually talk to Joe Biden and her article in the Herald is a must read if you don’t believe that the MSM has your vote locked up and the checked cashed…

Celebrity culture keeps Biden waiting in the wings
By Margery Eagan
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

• The Iraq War is the No. 1 concern for most Americans.

• After almost every Democratic debate, I hear the same surprised remark from the few people I know who actually watch them. That is, “Joe Biden was great ... Biden is best on the war ... ” Or, as Mary Lou LoVecchio put it yesterday, “howdo I get a (Joe Biden) bumper sticker?”

• Biden, in the Senate for more than 25 years, now head of the Foreign Relations Committee, is the guy who just pushed through, with bipartisan support, the soft partitioning of Iraq resolution. He “forgot more than Hilarity knows,” a conservative GOP-guy told me yesterday.

So here’s the question: why then is Biden still in single digits? Light years away from Hillary, Obama, and Edwards, the three top Democratic contenders?

The answer’s “pretty simple,” said Biden in a telephone interview yesterday with the Herald and 96.9-WTKK. “Money ... we will have raised $12 or $13 million by the time this is over,” he said, an amount that would have been competitive not long ago. “Now we’re talking about two candidates spending that much in Iowa alone (Hillary and Obama) ... a state with just 3 million people.”

SNIP a Roo…

In any case, we in the media covered Hillary and Obama non-stop. Hollywood, (or in the case of Oprah, Chicago) fell in love with Hillary and Obama, raising money for them non-stop. Then the media reported nonstop on how much money each had raised. And then the “so-called horse race” in the polls. Somewhere in there we talked about ideas. But not much.

Mostly we just talked Hillary vs. Obama with a little about Edwards mixed in.
Here’s something noteworthy about newspaper next-day coverage of last week’s debate, the one that finally got people tuning in (4 million viewers compared to the usual 2 million). Presumably we wanted to see Hillary fight back against the ganging-up-on-her “boys.”

SNIP Again…

Joe Biden’s son Beau, by the way, is Delaware’s attorney general and a National Guardsman likely to be deployed to Iraq in 2008. But Beau is not a celebrity. So most of us didn’t know that, either. - Boston Herald

If you believe that Hillary and Obama are the only answer to the Republican candidates in the field because of an advertisement then you are not paying attention to life as it effects you politically. This election is not about Survivor or the Bachelor reality shows where they plot against one another. Bad metaphor there, I apologize. This election is about cleaning up eight years of Bush and Cheney mistakes. It’s about America and if the election can be bought then Bill Gates or Warren Buffet should be the next President of the United States.

Pick your reality television show and toss the idea out the window. The politics of this next election needs real leaders and real ideas and Hillary and Obama may have the cash but the price is not right if you catch my drift.

Senator Biden is the gold standard! Followed by a close second is Governor Bill Richardson but that is a post for another day.

Papamoka

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Iowa and Bill Richardson

While many of the other candidates are going from rally to rally some of the candidates for President are going from Iowan to Iowan. Without the mega check books to buy dozens of commercials, candidates like Bill Richardson stop to meet and greet the people and actually talk to them. Millions of dollars in a war chest is good for the front running candidates but meeting the people is a gold mine of word of mouth. Having a brother in-law from Iowa I know word of mouth way over here in Massachusetts.

Here in New England we are being carpet bombed with political television and radio ads by the big three of each political party and being the third largest city in New England we have yet to see even one candidate. Romney was our former Governor but he didn’t spend much time here back then so I’m going to give him a pass. A full pass as a reputable candidate. Mitt spent his entire time as Governor running for President everywhere else but his home state that he was supposed to be governing.

I’m conducting a political survey here where you tell me if you have actually met and talked with one on one with anyone running for President of the United States. Post away in the comments section wherever you read this post. Iowans have an advantage over the rest of the nation in this respect. Going to a Barack Obama political superstar event where he is the next rock star does not count. You have to have actually sat in a room, a diner, a living room and talked with any of the candidates.

Bill Richardson is talking one on one with the people out in Iowa and I am a huge fan of that style of campaigning. Over at the LA Times they have this piece on real campaign work by the candidates other than shouting for “MAKE UP!”…

VINTON, IOWA -- Gov. Bill Richardson ends all his stump speeches with the story of a funeral:

After Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in 1945, the president's casket was moved by train from Georgia to New York, where he would be buried. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to pay their respects, lining the tracks as the funeral procession moved north. A reporter traveling on the train decided to interview people at one of the stops.

Among the crowd of mourners, he saw one particularly distraught man.

" 'You must have known the president?' the reporter asked. 'No,' said the man. 'But the president knew me.' "

Richardson pauses for effect.

"That," he says, "is the kind of president I would like to be."

Personal approach

It seems, at times, as if Richardson wants to get to know every Iowan in the state.

He has traveled thousands of miles, visiting 87 of the state's 99 counties. With shallow coffers and a long shot at the Democratic nomination for president, he is making a virtue of necessity.

He doesn't have the money for a large staff or extensive advertising, so he has no choice but to keep going from town to town, coffee shop to coffee shop, reaching out to as many Iowans as possible.

"I'm glad that Iowa is making the decision, not the pundits in Washington," the New Mexico governor told a crowd recently. "Iowans like underdogs . . . and I'm kind of counting on that." - LA Times

Governor Richardson has the people to people skills on a one on one environment but he sucks in political debate formats. He always appears angry and he has a right to be angry. The format bites! While the rest of the front runners are getting air time with campaign war chests that are overflowing with cash from special interest and the mega elitist that contribute to them, Bill Richardson is being just Bill. Talking to the folks one on one.

What I like about Bill Richardson is that he isn’t going to tell you what you want to hear to get nominated. He is telling you what you need to hear, not in sound bites but in full blown reasoned speeches and chats with the people of Iowa. If you looked at George Bush resume and compared it to Bill Richardson’s you would shake your head and wonder why the hell we elected Bush not once but twice! I won’t even go into the Gore/Bush debate Supreme Court thing and neither should you. That was then, this is now. Good book to read by the way.

What I want for a President is someone that is a true father figure to pull our collective heads out of our back sides. The current resident of the White House has chosen a divide and conquer path to leadership and that has isolated not only America from the world but also divided American’s amongst one another. That is not what I want in my next President. I want to know that he or she is not just looking out for the 50.1% of America but all of Americans.

No matter whom is running for the office, the history of our nation is united in the fact that across all party lines that we never want to see a 9/11 ever again. The dilemma we as voters face is separating the chafe from the wheat from the people that want to meet the people and the ones that believe television advertisement will win the election.

My current standing as a voter:

I’m favoring Richardson for his unbelievable experience and his sense of reality to tell the people what the real facts are concerning the war. He has the mentality of JFK but the fire of Teddy Roosevelt.

I’m favoring Biden as well because of his plans for bringing peace to the world and getting America out of Iraq. He has a plan for Social Security that might just work. Nobody else wants to touch this third rail issue with realistic plans. He flies coach on common carrier to his campaigning commitments across Iowa. Not well funded but definitely a real thinkers contender. If you want bull then don’t listen to Joe.

John Edwards, lost my vote when he failed to drop out when his wife’s cancer returned for the worse. Family is more important. I am sorry if you feel different but that is how I feel. She deserves her husband’s time more than ever than the people do.

Mitt Romney, he was governor? I truly didn’t notice while he was visiting every other state in the Union as Governor. Bringing health care to all of my states resident’s is not a good thing if you are a single working mother and it is mandatory for you to pay half your pay to make Mitt look good. Mitt leaves that little detail out of his MSM commercials for a reason. Let the MSM reporters dig that little detail out before the election. They will not spring that story any time soon. Lost my vote Mitt!

Rudi Giuliani, divorced three times as a Catholic? Those two things do not go together but Pat Robertson thinks it’s cool? I’m thinking Pat had a little bit of throw up in the back of his throat when he endorsed Rudi. Sell out was written all over that endorsement. Ask a New Yorker how Rudi dealt with homeless people and you get the dark side of this candidate.

Hillary Clinton… Umm, I think we need someone that will stand for our seniors and actually answer real questions about Social Security. Planted questioners? What was she thinking? All of the money is on her to actually be the winner of the next election because her campaign is spending the most dollars in the MSM! I’m not listening to the advertisements because they are crap. I think Steve Forbes proved that money does not buy an election. No offense to Steve Forbes intended.

John McCain, I admire his war record and service to our nation but he changed and went Bushism. New religion for him but it is not him. He is not the JM of seven years ago against Bush, against the mentality that Washington owns us all. Something went wrong there.

Denis Kucinich… Not going to happen. Great spot on Comedy Central but keep it real my friend and work the work you are best at.

Ron Paul, not going to happen either. Online support is not crossing party lines of the people that actually vote. I wish him luck though with finishing close.

Getting elected President is not won by the amount of money you have to run on, it is won by the ideas that the people will believe you can accomplish. Right now, ending the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a priority. Taking care of the rest of America is a close second.

Show me a candidate that actually cares. I’m finding that candidate in Richardson and Biden. The rest are all running on what you want to hear. Maybe these two guys should converge campaigns and run as a total ticket? Just a thought.

Papamoka

Cross posted at Bring IT ON!

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