As the Wisconsin Primary is coming soon and the Candidates increase the attention they are giving to the Dairy State --- it is very possible that as Wisconsin Goes --- so Goes the Nomination ! McCain is the Presumptive Candidate for the Republicans -- and based upon his "Independent" Leanings and willingness to work with the other side of the aisle for the Better Good --- even with our own Russ Feingold, McCain is the candidate I favored from the Republican Field.
On the Democratic side, it is "tooth and nail" between Clinton and Obama .... a race that may not be ultimately decided until it goes to the Convention Floor ! For the record, I am very supportive of Obama.
Ironically our very own Shorewood and the North Shore Communities could be the deciding battleground here in Wisconsin. At least looking at the money flow --- more donations from Whitefish Bay went to Barack -- while more donations from Shorewood went to Hillary.
It would be very interesting to more closely look at the demographic differences between the Bay and Shorewood, as polls have shown that older women lean to Hillary, while Barack gets more of the younger folks. On the Sixty Minutes program on 2/10/08, it was very obvious that Hillary has built in a lot of subtle ques that would make women her general age, identify more with her. However I did not see Barack using some ques to play towards the Black vote. CLICK HERE TO SEE 60 MINUTES INTERVIEWS:
Looking at the Aging Demographics here in Wisconsin --- Hillary went back to Bill Clinton's playbook in 1992, when he ran ads in the Florida Primary, that falsely said his opponent Tsongas was going to cut Social Security Benefits for the elderly.
As noted in an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Craig Gilbert cgilbert@journalsentinel.com posted on February 15, 2008 --- Hillary's negative campaigning attack ads against Barack Obama used the same theme her husband used, in an attempt to scare Older Voters !
HERE IS AN EXCERPT
Feuding extends to stepped-up TV ads
By CRAIG GILBERT
Posted: Feb. 15, 2008
"Then Clinton upped the ante Friday, charging Obama with "hiding behind false attack ads" and - mining a theme that Democrats usually save for Republicans - suggesting Obama "might raise the retirement age and cut benefits."
The Clinton campaign said this was based on Obama's saying on ABC last year that "everything should be on the table" when it comes to Social Security reform.
"Obama has said repeatedly he does not want to cut benefits or raise the retirement age," the Obama campaign said."
Milwaukee, Milwaukee County and the Milwaukee suburbs will play a major part in the primary
Following are Postings on my other Blog I have made over the past few weeks on what was then a very Global Issue -- but is now a very Local Issue.
February 8, 2008
A loophole in Campaign Finance Laws that is big enough to drive a Mack Truck through, is that the Candidate is not restricted in the amount they Give or Loan to Their Own Campaign !
That is why we see so many Rich Folks running for Office.
An added bonus for any politician who is in an office and who can attract a lot of Political Donations is that they can Lend Themselves Money Now --- and Pay Themselves Back Later from more than Willing Lobbyists, PAC Funds, and Those Who Want To Buy Influence.
In 1992 when Bill Clinton's campaign was neck and neck with Paul Tsongas, they both pretty much depleted their campaign war chests by the time of the Florida primary.
But Clinton, being the Sitting Governor of Arkansas was able to get an "unsecured" loan of $ 3 million for his Campaign from an Arkansas Bank --- Worthen National. With Fresh Money, he was able to bury Tsongas in Political Ads !
Much has been made of the fact that there was a lot of foreign intrigue involved in the Worthen loan --- but regardless of who owned or controlled the bank, and whether or not Clinton later paid off with political favors --- it was a very safe loan for the bank to make.
When you make a loan to a Sitting State Governor for political purposes, you know that whether they win or lose the race, they can hold fundraisers after the race (and a governor attracts a lot of political campaign funds) to pay off the loans.
So the question becomes --- Is Hillary Betting $5 Million that she can win the Nomination ? If She Loses the Campaign, does She Lose Her Money ?
My guess is that as a Sitting Senator from the State of New York --- Win or Lose --- Hillary can quickly Pay Herself Back through Future Fund Raisers.
Her $5 Million is as safe as being in the bank.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
As the Clinton's continue their Two for One campaign to get Hillary elected, it should be remembered that their prior Two for One Presidency dramatically increased the Death Penalty, despite the overwhelming bias against Blacks in its application.
Race influences . . .
A 1990 U.S. General Accounting Office report revealed "a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty." In its 1997 call for a moratorium on executions, the American Bar Association concluded that "racial discrimination remain[s] in courts across the country."
. . . who gets charged
The local District Attorney (D.A.) makes the decision to pursue a death sentence. A 1998 Death Penalty Information Center report reveals that 98% of the D.A.s in death penalty states are white.
On the federal level, the pattern of racial bias in capital prosecutions is striking. A recent Justice Department study of federal capital cases from 1995 to 2000 found that 74% of the defendants were people of color. Upon release of the study, Attorney General Janet Reno said she was "sorely troubled" by such stark racial disparities.
. . . who gets a death sentence
Over half of those on death row are people of color. Black men alone make up over 42% of all death row prisoners, though they account for only 6% of people living in the U.S..
. . . who gets executed
Nearly half of those executed since 1976 have been people of color, with blacks alone accounting for 35%. All told, 82% have been put to death for the murder of a white person. Only 1.8% were white people who had been convicted of killing people of African, Asian, or Latin descent. Meanwhile, people of color are the victims in more than half of all homicides.
Congress and the President
Congress and the President also have refused to remedy the racism inherent in death penalty sentencing. Though the Racial Justice Act (RJA) has been introduced four times, Congress has yet to pass it. The RJA would allow prisoners to challenge their death sentences using standards normal in civil racial-discrimination cases.
Thanks largely to the Congressional Black Caucus, a weak version of the RJA was passed by the House in 1994, but the measure never reached the Senate. A final bill signed by President Clinton expanded the federal death penalty from two to 60 crimes and established procedures for resuming federal executions.
Then, in 1996, Congress passed and Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The law drastically limits federal court review of death row appeals. At the same time congress gutted public funding of legal aid services for death row prisoners - which, for most, offer their only legal representation.
Source:
Equal Justice USAA project of the Quixote Center
http://www.ejusa.org/moratorium_now/broch_race.html
I find it very interesting that Bill Clinton has somehow convinced many Black voters that he has an affinity with them --- and by osmosis, so does Hillary. In a delicate balance, it appears that Bill is the Black Hat with the job of bashing Obama --- while trying to inject Race while appearing not to inject Race, while Hillary sits above the fray.
In what may have been the most cynical political act ever, then candidate Bill Clinton, while in the middle of his presidential campaign in 1992, went back to Arkansas to Officiate over the Execution of a Mentally Incompetent Black Man.
Conventional Wisdom is that Clinton wanted to show that he was tough on crime to get crossover votes from conservatives, especially in the south.
Following is a recounting of this from Expedia:
Rector was subject to a unique overlap of controversies in 1992 during his execution in Arkansas. A question of the morality of killing someone who was functionally retarded. An oft-cited example of his mental insufficiency is his decision to save the dessert of his last meal for after his execution.[1] In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of people with mental retardation in Atkins v. Virginia, ruling that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Rector was African-American, adding to racial questions relating to the death penalty.
By 1992, Bill Clinton was insisting that Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" and took a position strongly supporting capital punishment. To make his point, he flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign to affirm that the execution would continue as scheduled. Some considered it a turning point in that race, hardening a soft public image.[citation needed] Others tend to cite the execution as an example of what they perceive to be Clinton's opportunism, directly influenced by Michael Dukakis and his response to CNN's Bernard Shaw when asked during a campaign debate on October 13, 1988 if he would be supportive of the death penalty were his wife to be raped and murdered.
Rector was executed by lethal injection. It took medical staff, with Rector's help, more than fifty minutes to find a suitable vein. The curtain remained closed between Rector and the witnesses, but some reported they could hear Rector moaning. The administrator of the State Department of Corrections Medical Program said "the moans did come as a team of two medical people that had grown to five worked on both sides of his body to find a vein. That may have contributed to his occasional outbursts." The state later attributed the difficulty in finding a suitable vein to Rector's heavy weight and to his use of an antipsychotic medication.
Rector was the third person executed by the state of Arkansas since Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), after new capital punishment laws were passed in Arkansas and that came into force on March 23, 1973.
Bill Clinton's critics from the anti-capital punishment left have seen the case of Rector as an unpleasant example of what they view as Clinton's cynical careerism. The writer Christopher Hitchens, in particular, devotes much of a chapter of his polemical attack on Clinton, No One Left to Lie To what he regards as the immorality of the then Democratic candidate's decision to condone, and take political advantage of, Rector's execution.[2]
Monday, January 21, 2008
The campaign news seems to be more about Bill attacking Barack, than about Hillary.
If Hillary were to become president, would she still rely on Bill for protecting her ?
If Iran's president says bad things about her, will Bill hold a press conference defending her ?
It just seems that Hillary is not able to fight her own battles --- which is one good reason to vote against her --- another, perhaps better reason --- is so we don't have to keep listening to Bill.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
It is really ironic that the New Hampshire Primary brings a tear to the eye of a candidate. Is it the cold Arctic air --- or the cold reality that competing to be President of the United States takes a physical and emotional toll on all the candidates.
In 1972, Edmund Muskie showed some emotion --- and that was the end of his aspiration to be President. The common consensus was that if a little thing like a hard campaign with all the slings and arrows it unleashes on the participants could bring a crack to his composure --- how was he going to hold up as President of the United States, which has to be the most demanding and hardest job in the World ?
Now we have Hillary in 2008 who comes to the brink of tears. A show of emotion that many of the pundits are crediting for her saving a little bit of her lead over Barack.
The show of emotion for a Muskie, as man, was a sign of weakness, but for Hillary, as a woman, it is a sign that she is actually human after all.
There are more than a few cynical pundits, who think that Hillary's display of emotion, was really a calculated ploy to reach out to the woman voters, many of whom she lost to Barack in Iowa.
It may seem perfectly plausible that Hillary was putting on an act, seeing how in the past, she has not let anything deter her ambitions, or break her implacable demeanor.
Over her "35 years of experience" (whatever that may mean) the constant affairs of her husband, the numerous scandals of her business dealings, and the whole humiliation of the Monica Lewinski dalliance, couldn't break her composure, or her laser guided political ambitions.
In fact, we can only imagine how many women Hillary brought to tears, when she joined with her husband and political loyalists, in characterizing his illicit conquests as being "those loose women who seduced the poor man past his the limits of his inner strength".
Normally of course, an avowed liberal feminist like Hillary, would never have condoned the condemnation of the subordinate female employee by a powerful boss such as the president of the United States. But in the past, it seems, such Meaningless Emotion had no place in Hillary's relentless march to the rhythm of Her Own Political Ambitions and Agenda.
What do you think ?
Real Emotion and Tears --- or a Sure Nomination for Best Actress ?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Back in 1970 or thereabouts, I was at a symposium on Civil Rights.
Noticeably at this symposium was a strong representation of Feminist Speakers, who were espousing that Women needed Civil Rights recognition, programs, incentives and advantages --- as much as Blacks did.
The New Feminist Movement was already a few years old and getting well established, but this was at a time when they were actively attaching their movement to what had been predominantly a Civil Rights movement against discrimination (and worse) against Blacks.
Leaving the symposium, I happened to be talking with a Black guy I knew from other such events. I was stunned when he said to me something to the effect that: "With all the Feminists jumping on the Civil Rights Movement --- so much for advancement for the Black Man "His statement hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I have remembered it all these years.
Of course I asked him what he meant, as I regarded the Feminist Movement as being a neutral force, at worst, in regards to Black Civil Rights.
He explained that in his opinion, as the Feminists' movement gained traction, it would become an alternative for employers and other institutions, and allow them to proclaim they were being Tolerant, Diverse, Equal and Affirmative in their hiring and promotion practices, because they were doing so for the Women as a Minority --- while at the same time, doing very little for the Advancement of Black Men.
Although I could see his point, I didn't think it would come to that. I actually thought the inclusion of Feminists in the Civil Rights mainstream, would be like the fabled "rising tide", which would raise all boats.
Over the past 37 years, however, I regretfully have to say I was wrong and he was absolutely right. Every study I have seen in the past several years show that unemployment is worse for Black Men than Black Women. and White Women fare better than Black Women.
Of the three groups, both White and Black Women achieve more in education and wages than Black Men.
Even when it comes to assistance programs, almost all of them are geared to wards Women with far fewer to Men. Those programs in part, help to subsidize the increasingly prevalent single parent, female led households in the Black community. The common consensus is that such "Fatherless" households contribute greatly to increased crime, violence, drug use, lower educational achievement and poverty in the Black community.
It seems that the social safety net programs we do have, put Black Women in charge of the purse. The irrelevance of the Black Man, has to some extent become a product of the design of numerous government programs.
The Civil Rights Movement has failed the Black Man and America's Liberals have turned their backs on the Black Man, in favor of the Woman -- preferably White Woman, but makes some room for the Black Woman too.
The current Democratic Party race for President has been described by many as an opportunity to make history as either electing the first Woman President, or the first Black president. Based upon the history of Civil Rights in America so far, Women, and especially the White Woman, has been the overwhelming preference over the Black Man.
As the self proclaimed Liberal Voice of America will the Democrats be "copping out" by going for Hillary Clinton, a White Woman, over Barack Obama, a Black Man ?
Is the "Cop Out" in ---- to keep Obama out ?
What's YOUR TAKE ?
