Dem's PrePrimary Convention - CD1 winners & losers

The results are:

Robert Pidcock	25 votes	4.16%
Martin Heinrich	339 votes	56.41%
Rebecca Vigil-Giron	67 votes	11.15%
Michelle Lujan Grisham	170 votes	28.29%

While Martin's vote didn't come as much of a surprise, he's been running for over a year, Michelle did much better than expected - securing the second spot on the June Primary ballot.

Questions remain if Robert Pidcock or Rebecca Vigil-Giron will try to gather the additional signatures necessary to get on the ballot. It appears that they only have a few days do so.

One piece of trivia deserves mention - since Martin won his City Council seat with a plurality, if memory serves me correctly - 30% of the vote, this is the first election where he actually won a majority of the votes cast.

Another view of Hillary's 3 AM ad

While I feel totally justified bashing the Clintons when and where I can - this you need to decide for yourself.

Direct and unedited from The Carpetbagger Report..........

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We’ve all seen Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad. We’ve also seen Barack Obama’s response ad. And the parodies of both. It seemed as if, over the course of just two weeks, there wasn’t much else to say about the whole exchange.

But Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson considers the ad from a perspective I hadn’t considered.

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.

I’ve been tough on some of the Clinton campaign’s tactics of late, some of which have struck me as overly aggressive, needlessly divisive, and sometimes just plain ugly. But I’ve seen the “3 a.m.” ad a hundred times and I just haven’t picked up on racial undertones.

Patterson is an accomplished scholar who’s forgotten more about racial symbolism than most of us will ever learn, but this criticism strikes me as wildly off-base. The ad is premised on exploiting fear, but not racial fears. “Birth of a Nation”? Seriously?

I can think of a few too many examples, most notably Geraldine Ferraro a few days ago, of Clinton campaign officials and surrogates playing the race card in troubling ways. But to say the “3 a.m.” is one of them is a stretch.

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But you know its always wise to remember "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar".

Hillary's missing experience

From the The Daily Telegraph:

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

No one should be surprised after all we are dealing with the Clintons.

But, as they say, it gets better. Further along in this article you find that:

Steven King, a negotiator with Lord Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party, argued that Mrs Clinton might even have helped delay the chances of peace. "She was invited along to some pre-arranged meetings but I don’t think she exactly brought anybody together that hadn’t been brought together already," he said. Mrs Clinton was "a cheerleader for the Irish republican side of the argument", he added.

"She really lost all credibility when on Bill Clinton’s last visit to Northern Ireland [in December 2000] when she hugged and kissed [Sinn Fein leaders] Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness."

For more on this see the article - David Trimble: Hillary Clinton mere 'cheerleader' in Ireland

Clintons distort images to attack Obama

As shown at the Daily Kos in a posting titled Obama "blacker" ad no accident another line of attack against Obama is to simply distort his image to make him "blacker".

Make him blacker and his nose wider to fit the stereotype they are pushing. No doubt it helps to scare the older white folks.

In a blind rush for power what's a little Photoshop between friends?

The Clintons are racist - pure and simple.

Hillary - bringing the DLC back to life

For Progressive Democrats this is important and should be scary - since the DLC, Democratic Leadership Council, is ashamed of our Democratic heritage moving them back into power can only be bad news.

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From Kos' posting Team DLC embedded in Clinton campaign:

Clinton is getting her debate prep from Bruce Reed, the president of the DLC.

Clinton has been silent on her leadership role at the DLC, since it's not the sort of thing that people like to trumpet anymore. Reed has been an enthusiastic surrogate for Clinton, but the candidates don't always get to choose their supporters. (Al Wynn, anyone?)

But debate prep? Team Clinton has Team DLC firmly embedded in the campaign.

Update: Remember who top Clintonista James Carville wanted as DNC chair after 2006 in his attempted party coup? DLC executive director Harold Ford, who would clearly be a finalist for the gig in a Clinton administration.

This is yet another reason to fear a Clinton Presidency.

An email to Pam

Re: your posting The self-destructive Democrat, 2008 model

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Pam:

While I appreciate your view that in the end we must fall in line and choose the lesser of two evils I've been playing that electoral game from the last 35 years and as a Progressive and as a Gay Man that attitude hasn't gotten me very far.

What I see is this - we as Progressives or we as members of the LGBT Community are seen as a doormat for powerful parts of the Democratic Party and I'm sick of it. I'm tired of the politics of division and beliefs driven by polls and I just ain't gonna play anymore. If Hillary eeks out the nomination I will not vote for President its just that simple. While I appreciate that Hillary is better than McCain on many issues there are larger issues here that demand our attention. What the Democratic Party stands for and why it exists is all I care about now - not getting Hillary into office so she will do a marginally better job than John McCain. I want the whole prize not just a glance at it.

The issues Progressives and the LGBT Community have had with the Clintons can't just be washed away. How can any of use forget or forgive Bill Clinton for signing the Defense of Marriage Act? He threw us under the bus because it was convenient to do so at that moment in time and space and she will happily throw us under the bus again when a pollster says it will give her a 0.0001% net gain at the polls. That's just how the Clintons play ball.

My attraction to Obama is his desire to unify and include not to split people into groups so that they can be used against each other. That is a Republican technique and also the Clinton technique of choice and it should be rejected by both Progressives and the LGBT Community. Obama's concern for inclusion is all I need. Re: experience well - I don't want him to have Hillary's or John's experience because that's what got us into the mess we have today.

The lazy, lazy press and the Clintons up to old tricks

From the Globe and Mail -

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ALEXANDER PANETTA
The Canadian Press
March 5, 2008 at 8:53 PM EST

OTTAWA — If the Prime Minister is seeking the first link in the chain of events that has rocked the U.S. presidential race, he need look no further than his chief of staff, Ian Brodie, The Canadian Press has learned.

A candid comment to journalists from CTV News by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's most senior political staffer during the hurly-burly of a budget lock-up provided the initial spark in what the American media are now calling NAFTAgate.

Mr. Harper announced Wednesday that he has asked an internal security team to begin finding the source of a document leak that he characterized as being "blatantly unfair" to Senator Barack Obama.

What is now a swirling Canada-U.S. controversy began on Feb. 26, when the usually circumspect Mr. Brodie was milling among droves of Canadian media on budget day in the stately old building that once housed Ottawa's train station.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff Ian Brodie watches from the back of the room during a photo op before the government caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Wednesday.

Mr. Brodie wandered over to speak to Finance Department officials and chatted amiably with journalists — who appreciated this rare moment of direct access to the top official in Mr. Harper's notoriously tight-lipped government.

The former university professor found himself in a room with CTV employees where he was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of reporters while other journalists were within earshot of other colleagues.

At the end of an extended conversation, Mr. Brodie was asked about remarks aimed by the Democratic candidates at Ohio's anti-NAFTA voters that carried serious economic implications for Canada.

Since 75 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton's musings about reopening the North American free-trade pact had caused some concern.

Mr. Brodie downplayed those concerns.

"Quite a few people heard it," said one source in the room.

"He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

Government officials did not deny the conversation took place.

They said that Mr. Brodie sought to allay concerns about the impact of Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton's assertion that they would re-negotiate NAFTA if elected. But they did say that Mr. Brodie had no recollection of discussing any specific candidate — either Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama.

So, it wasn't the Obama Campaign that was speaking to the Canadians it was the Clinton Campaign. One wonders if the lazy press will ever get around to informing us of that fact?

As always with the Clintons this just serves to remind us all - things are never quite what they seem to be -

Barack's not Hillary's "Stepin Fetchit"!

So, this AM Hillary is saying that there could be a Clinton - Obama ticket.

I just want to heave - guess she thinks they might need a good butler!

Looks like the Clintons are calculating again - they figure a "step and fetch it" might be handy to deal with those they throw under the bus. He could do a bit of "shuck n jive" and tell them that the nice white lady doesn't really doesn't mean it after all!

Please give me a break.

Anybody stupid enough to become a second to the HillBill show is walking into a trap. Vice Presidents and the Democratic Party have never fared well under the Clintons' reign.

Above all things Obama understands images and he knows he doesn't want to play the role of Stepin Fetchit in a Clinton Campaign. Just Imagine what the Republicans could/would do with that image!

Why I despise Hillary

Why I despise Hillary and the BillHill/HillBill show -

As a Democrat I'm part of a small but very real wing of the Party that simply despises the Clintons. The reasons why are long and weighty but it all boils down to two simple facts:

1) the Clintons believe what a pollster tells them to believe and their strength of belief is based on totally on how strong the poll is -

2) they like to win by dividing people not by uniting them and I sick of this technique. It seems to be a strategy much loved by the Bush - Clinton camps. It ultimately always ends the same way - nothing changes except the level of public discourse gets worse -

If Hillary ends up pulling out a win, and rest assured she only cares that she wins - not how many lies she tells or who she hurts to do so - I WILL NOT BE VOTING FOR HER IN THE FALL. I had hoped that Clinton fatigue would set in and save us from that fate but that doesn't appear to be true. I need hope and when the Clintons come back you can abandon all hope.