Bent Corner

With the results of Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries tallied up, I think we finally have a clear winner for the Democratic nominee for President. It looks like Republican John McCain will be squaring off against Barack Obama.

If you are a Republican, I can’t help but think this is good news to you. It almost certainly assures another Republican President till at least 2012.

I simply don’t think Obama has a chance of beating McCain. I might be wrong. I’ve been wrong before and I most certainly will be wrong again. With that said, I just think comes with a lot of things the Republicans will jump on and capitalize to make him look as though he has no business in the White House.

Most of the time Republicans have to make stuff up about their opponents. They wont have to do that with Obama.

I’ve come full circle on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. I supported him. I donated a few bucks to him. I voted for him in the Maryland primary. I really liked the guy. I now wish I could take my vote back. I wish I hadn’t voted for him. Mostly it’s because of his judgment in choosing a racist bigot to not only be his paster, but the paster of his two young daughters.

Statements like this don’t help:

“… .. The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it…”

Typical white person? There’s no such thing as a typical white person. There’s a word for people that group people by the color of their skin.

The word is “racist“.

I have a problem with Barack Obama and it has nothing to do with race. To be honest, I don’t even think of his race until someone brings it up. It’s not something I identify him with. My problem with Barack Obama has to do with his judgment. It’s about choosing someone that says despicable, awful things to be his minister. To be his “moral compass”.

It’s an issue of judgment, not race.

I’m bothered that Obama would associate himself with someone such as Rev. Wright. The person I thought I was voting for in the Maryland primary wasn’t the type of person that would choose a dick like Rev. Wright to be his minister. Evidently I was wrong.

I’m also bothered that he would also expect anyone to believe his excuse that he wasn’t sitting in the pews when Rev. Wright said any of those things. That’s incredibly hard for me to believe. How stupid does he think we are? He had to have known that his paster of 17 years believed such things.

If not, he was incredibly duped.

He has used the analogy that Rev. Wright is like an uncle that sometimes says outlandish things. People don’t pick their uncles. People pick their pastors.

People also pick their candidates. It appears I didn’t do a very good job.

I wondered how things would look right now if the Democrats picked a nominee using the same formula that is used to chose a president. Instead of a candidate winning a proportional amount of delegates, what would it look like when they won a state, they took all of the delegates like they will do in November during the general election?

The results were surprising. It turns out not to be as close as you might think.

Barack Obama has done well in small states with fewer electoral college votes. Additionally, many of the states in Obama’s column traditionally go to the Republican on election day. The so called “red states”.

Hillary Clinton has done much better with larger states that have more electoral college votes. Unlike Obama, many of the states Clinton has done well in are the traditional Democrat states. The so called “blue states”.

Neither candidate at this point can win enough delegates before the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I think if Barack Obama expects the superdelegates to put him over the top this August, he has to demonstrate that he can win a big state. So far, he hasn’t been able to do that. I believe he has to win in Pennsylvania. If Hillary Clinton continues her streak of winning the big states and takes Pennsylvania, I believe the superdelegates will make her the nominee.

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from one of his readers explaining why they are supporting Barack Obama for president. It’s a powerful letter nicely sums up just why I voted for him earlier this week and hopefully will be voting for him again this November:

There’s one salient reason why people of my age are supporting Obama and that’s because we feel that Obama will finally show us what it means to be proud of our president.

I read more than I should about politics and US history and am always confused as to how Americans can love their president so. Intellectually I understand why Americans love(d) Lincoln and the Roosevelts but I never felt why they did.

Andrew, people my age are too young to remember Bill Clinton. All we have is George W. Bush. The office of the President to us is a mockery. We don’t link President Bush to concepts such as leader, we link it to ignorance and idiocy. Most people my age have never felt proud of our President. We grew up on the Daily Show, we only know how to make fun of him and mock him.

I attended an Obama rally a few days ago and was amazed at how filled up with emotion I was. Halfway through his speech, other 21 year olds just like that filled the Hall were screaming their heads off, waving banners, and grinning. Everyone was giddy, hell even I was giddy. I was smiling and chanting along to “Yes We Can.” I didn’t know what that feeling was because I had never felt it. But then I realized it. It was pride. I was proud of Obama.

I know you’ve felt proud of Reagan and others have felt proud of Bill Clinton. I can’t wait to actually know what it feels like to be proud of my President and not embarrassed by him. That’s why at least my generation is turning out in droves to make Obama president. We’ve finally got a taste of what it feels like to be proud of our President and we’re not giving that feeling up.

Hillary Clinton threatened not to attend any more events sponsored by MSNBC over a comment by one of their news personalities, David Shuster. Of course MSNBC knuckled under and suspended Shuster. Caving into pressure is what they do best.

Shuster said that Chelsea Clinton had been “pimped out” to make calls to superdelegates on behalf of her mother, Senator Hillary Clinton.

Only an idiot would think that Shuster meant that Hillary was sending Chelsea out to perform sexual acts with strange men for money. That is how they chose to react to the comment by Shuster implied that Chelsea was a prostitute.

What Shuster should have said was that Hillary Clinton is getting so despite in her run for the White House that she has enlisted her 27 year old daughter to call Democratic operatives to put pressure on them to cast their superdelegate vote for her mother - no matter what the will of the people may be.

In other words, Hillary is pimping Chelsea out.

The more states and delegates Barack Obama wins, the more Hillary is counting on the superdelegates to give her the election.  Since an overwhelming number of these superdelegates have ties to the Clintons, she sees this as a clear advantage over Obama.

Chelsea is not a 14 year old kid anymore. If she is going to help her mother circumvent the democratic process by locking in the superdelegate majority, she is fair game.

It appears Ron Paul is throwing in the towel. I’m not sure why. Just because he has no chance of becoming the Republican nominee shouldn’t stop him or his campaign. He never stood a chance to begin with.

I wonder how much of that money he still has. He very well might need it to win back his congressional seat. I’m not sure if his vanity run for president is costing him back home like it is Dennis Kucinich, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was. Just because Ron Paul got real popular with guys on the Internet doesn’t mean he did with the folks back home.

What do the members of the Ron Paul cult do now? Scientology is always looking for people.

Here is a message he sent to his followers:

February 8, 2008

Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky, of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you. Millions of Americans — and friends in many other countries — have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties. How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.

Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties — just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.

Sincerely,

Ron

Ron Paul claims that he’s been excluded from a New Hampshire January 6 Republican debate being organized by Fox News. This is the weekend before the New Hampshire Primary. Ron Paul says he is being excluded because Fox News is scared of him. Why is Doctor Paul constantly questioning everyone’s bravery? First a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and now a cable news network.

Ron Paul’s Internet fans aren’t taking this exclusion sitting down. They are organizing a boycott against any company that advertises on Fox News. They have a list. They are getting the word out to all followers of Ron Paul to not to buy products from these companies.

One of these companies is Gold Bond. That means if a Ron Paul fan were to get a rash in an embarrassing place, they would have to turn elsewhere to get some instant relief. Let’s just hope that they go rash-free.

What’s even funnier is that some Ron Paul supporters are also advising fellow Ron Paul supporters to contact the FCC and complain. This is from a post on a Ron Paul message board:

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t seen this tactic posted yet. Along with advertisers, this is the other major weakness of broadcasters/networks.

The other critical items we can influence directly are the FCC broadcast license for each affiliate, AND FCC approval for station purchases/mergers/trades. By specifically targeting FCC approvals, your comments will have a LOT more long-term weight. Endangering the local affiliate’s license with enough negative comments in the right way will change their attitude from “It’s the network, nothing we can do” and largely ignoring you to actually calling the NewsCorp on your behalf saying “OMG, fix this NOW!”

Remember, the FCC threatened to hit EACH broadcast station with a 6-figure fine for the half-second “wardrobe malfunction” at the SuperBowl*.

This is funny for two different reasons. First, Ron Paul represents a political philosophy that believes a big federal government is bad. If he had his way, not only would the FCC cease to exist, so would the IRS, the Department of Education, the CIA, the FBI, and a whole host of other federal agencies. What do Ron Paul supporters do when they think their man has been slighted? They whine about it to a government agency.

It makes you wonder why they are Ron Paul supporters in the first place.

Secondly, the FCC doesn’t have any jurisdiction over Fox News. It’s a cable network, not a broadcast network. Whining to the FCC about something a cable network is a waste of time. Then again, why should that stop a Ron Paul supporter?

And why is Fox News excluding Ron Paul from the debate? Because there is no debate. It was canceled three weeks ago because of it’s close proximity with another similar event. Ron Paul had been invited to attend, but reportedly his staff never got back with the event organizers to confirm that he would attend.

Why would Fox News exclude someone like Ron Paul from the debate? Including Ron Paul ensures more people will watch. Not only his rabid die hard fan base, but people like me that think he’s a loon. I would watch just for the entertainment value. Who knows what he would say.

Evidently Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has a hard time telling the difference between AIDS and a highly contagious and scary disease from the middle ages. Back in 1992 when he was trying to become a U.S. senator, he answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. I have to think somebody at the AP kept Huckabee’s answers in a special file. The file was probably entitled, “WHACK JOB”.

Among the things advocated by Huckabee:

• He wrote that, “If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.”
• He suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.
• He wrote that, “It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”

In case you don’t remember, by 1992 we already knew that you couldn’t catch HIV or AIDS from casual contact with those that were infected. As far as infectious diseases go, it’s fairly difficult to contract. You don’t get it from shaking hands with someone or sitting next to them on a bus. Unless you are exchanging bodily fluids with someone who is either HIV positive or has AIDS, you have nothing to worry about.

Even back in 1992, people knew the idea of putting people with AIDS in special camps was a dumb idea. Everyone except Mike Huckabee.