"They dangle the carrot of real change in front of us, then yank it away in favor of the entrenched interests. Hillary? Barack? Who knows? Who cares?"

Yup, it sure looks like a Hitlery/McCain contest. Obama gives the appearance of change but none of the substance. We'd have been bombing Lebanon along with the Israelis last year if things had been up to him. He quakes in the presence of AIPAC just like the rest of them. There won't be any change this time around, you're absolutely right.

where will Hillary go?
further to the Right than any GOPer could imagine in a wet dream.

when will the uber-liberals grow up and stop demonizing democratic leadership (the Clintons) for pragmatically governing from the middle

"while NBC played the Big Brother role, going to court to keep that meddling Dennis Kucinich off the stage. "

Remind me - who was it who went to court first?

Oh yeah - Kucinich.....

.....NBC first arbitrarily decide to exclude him from the debate. Kucinich had no other choice if he wanted a chance to participate. Aren't the networks supposed to operate in the public interest?

Have another choice - he should have gone to the FCC first.

If you read the Nevada SC decision that was their basis for over turning the lower court's decision.

Basically the first recourse for Kucinich should have been the FCC and - if they didn't help THEN the courts.

....wouldn't have done squat. You know it and I know it. They are a bought and paid arm of corporate America. Also, the Nevada SC would simply have looked for another reason to dodge the issue.

The real issue is NBC, who's been given the right to use the PUBLIC airways, kept out a candidate from participating in a public debate helping to determine the leader of this nation; for reasons related to private gain.

They basically didn't like his message, so they squelched his voice. That's the real issue. Private corporations determining who the public gets to see and hear. They've been fighting to marginalize him from the very beginning; they just decided to be more blatant about it lately, because they knew they could get away with it.

they had done squat he would have had a legitimate recourse to the courts.

I'm assuming you don't agree with ignoring the law when it's politically convenient?

Well, my reading of the FCA, which enabled the FCC, is that Kucinich had one of two recourses for damages, through the FCC or through the courts, but not both. He chose the courts.

I am willing to concede, however, that I may have an incomplete understanding of all the case law. I am, after all, not a lawyer.

The main issue I was trying to illustrate though, was that NBC FIRST disinvited Kucinich from the debates based on arbitrary considerations which they contrived for the sole purpose of excluding him. The court system would not have been brought into this at all if NBC had been doing its job in the public interest, which is after all part of their responsibility in being granted a license in the first place.

Second point I have some sympathy with.

The first is why I refered to the NV SC ruling which states that the court's

"sole function with respect to FCA enforcement is to review final FCC orders"

So his proper course of action was to go to the FCC first.

It's on page 3 here.

Link

I think Kucinich would have done himself more favors if he and Gravel had got together on this one. As it seemed to me he wanted the wrong against himself righted but not the right thing done period. That's just how it struck me though.

Ona related note - before NH should all these people (well D people at least) have been invited to the debate?

http://www.sos.nh.gov/recounthills.htm

Frankly I have no idea who some of these people are.

I read the Nevada SC ruling again before responding to your previous post. Then I went back and read the FCA. As I said, my interpretation of the FCA was that Kucinich had two distinct paths to recoup damages. Alas, I'm not a lawyer, so I may have interpreted this incorrectly. I would hasten to add, however, that Kucinich received a favorable ruling at the district level, so his case was obviously open to interpretation, and not cut and dried. Judges are after all, just people too.

It may be that Kucinich and Gravel should have gotten together on this one. Gravel was screwed even worse than Kucinich. Kucinich, however, was the only one "disinvited", so maybe that was a pivotal point in his argument to the courts, and including Gravel might have only muddied the waters.

As far as which candidates should have been included, I think I would give current and former congresspersons and senators a bit more credibility than just your average Joe.

"So, anyone got a 'splanation, in view of the abysmal performance given by these 2 since they discovered each other, why Democrats insist on voting for one of them instead one of the 2 GOOD candidates (Kucinich or Edwards)?"

You know the answer to this question, jtree. The public's complete lack of concern for anything but the most vacuous in American life. Even with a war draining our treasury, family members dying in Iraq, nothing done to fix the mess caused by Katrina, and forced from their homes by a financial crisis about to shut off access to any more of the usurious lines of credit they now depend upon, what interests Americans most is the Super Bowl, wings and beer. The American public is best exemplified on the local news, the home in some rust belt blight burning because someone was drunk and forgot to turn off the space heater, the yahoo headed to "the game" sporting dual Steelers penants on his car, and the the weatherguy gesteculating about some warm front like a schmuck. It was different years ago. I feel sorry for anyone under 60.

but nice lament.

except...you must not watch much teevee (smart guy), because the weather is now almost always done by some comely bunny type. You know, to keep the 18-42 male demographic.

And yes, the days of Cronkite and Huntley are loooooong gone.

i don't think we the people, even we the working class trailer trash people bedazzed by the wide screen teevee, are quite as stooopid as you and Lowell thingy would like to imagine.
When you point the finger of blame, look in a different direction - up, not doooown.
The last thing the corporo-fascist state wants is an informed citizenry. They bought the media long ago - even NPR works over time to shovel the shit and spin the propaganda. A progressive populist will never be allowed to present his ideas to the people or stir them up out of their overworked and underpaid misery or give them hope, because the Machine will go into overdrive to ridicule and sideline that person, warping and soundbiting their message till it's unrecognizable. And if the people persist, their votes can always be Diebolded, and if the candidate persists, he can always be Wellstoned.
Nuf said. No New Deal, just same old shit.

we're stupid. we're trained stupid. we're kept stupid.

except... why is it that those of us here and at kos and huffington ... aren't stupid?

as many as 90% of americans "believe" in a personal, interventionist god and heaven or some such. a third believe in rapture. two thirds believe in the efficacy of prayer.

With that much skepticism being so thoroughly suppressed, is it any wonder how we're so goddamn stupid?

But, am I so exceptional that I haven't fallen for their horseshit (I watch a considerable amount of teevee, though selectively)? Did my parents succeed in raising a pensive kid where most only succeed in raising post-hypnotic drones? I cannot believe that I am that much better than the putz across the street. So why is he a fascist? And why does he have a willard sign in his yard? How could anyone be THAT stupid?

Hi Oryx,

I don't think anybody's done this to us, that's too facile. We're doing this and have done this to ourselves. I mean how can it possibly help when people see their political, economic and social solutions wrapped up in packages like Hitlery, Obama, McCain or Romney. Think about it. Some - if not most - actually consider bacteria of this kind as in some way inspiring! The imbecile enthusiasms expressed for them are the very measure of the schlub mentality that curses us. And as long as there's a bag of Cheese Toasties to munch or an infomercial in which to see ones life as modeled, it'll never change. In the final analysis, schlub culture is brought to its highest development with the kind of idiot that employs Joey Greco of Cheaters to help him find his way through life. One might even expect one of Greco's clients to appear in some intervention wearing a "Vote Democrat" teeshirt. People like this exploit themselves, and although pitiable, are more likely to benefit from a high fibre emetic than from sympathy. These are the folks that are giving you Hitlery and it doesn't make any difference if they're black or white, Latino or Anglo, man or woman, rich or poor. The problem is the state of mind not the gender or the ethnicity. I say vote for Joey Greco, he's probably the one person most closely in touch with schlub culture. And after you've finished voting you can always go and hock your mother's engagement ring at Vic's Jewelers. That'll cover the wings, the beer and cable subscription for a month.

You're onto something, John. The "schlub culture" is just too brain dead to perceive that Senator Hillary Clinton is someone the nation should be proud of. The "schlub culture" calls her insane things like "Hitlery" and thinks it's funny, because they have damaged brains as a result of some of the population getting high doses of heavy metals which our bodies don't yet know how to release. The brain tissue embedded with heavy metal deposits causes bacteria to florish around said deposit, which makes critical thinking nearly impossible. Also, of course, the Republican party's dedicated destruction of our once great education system for the last 35 years might have something to do with the fact that we're now a society of imbeciles. (Thanks, Ronnie Ray-gun.) PNAC has been grooming the country to be stupid unquestioning Christian Soldier automatons for their endless wars, or part of the huge bulging prison population that is groomed from birth to be imprisoned slave wage zombies. What a great laugh Likud Zionists must be getting over the coup.

Because a lot of the operatives in the Democratic Party undoubtedly knew that someday there's be a candidate who knew how to use all that power and all that corporate money as skillfully as the Republicans do. And now they have one.

The only people crying are the voters who have been screwed out of a choice.

America deserves better, MissGrizz. How come out of 300 million people, Hillary is a front-runner?

She couldn't even keep her husband in line so how is she going to run a complex nation?

www.dangerouscreation.com

So any woman whose husband cheats on her is somehow guilty of some defect? Who knew there were so many defective woman undeserving of whatever station in life they may work to achieve.

Yes he is.

Uh, no, defiancedemon, Matt is NAWT kyoot. Matt is merely a Hunter Thompson wannabe, riding on Hunter's gonzo stylistics and huffing a whiff of contact high from Hunter's gravitas and tireless search for truth amid the vile dissembling of politics. Matt is no more the real thing, the real Kyoot that was Hunter, than Barack is heir to the JFK dynasty.

Beating up on Hillary Clinton certainly takes no balls or truth to do so, since Newt and his Nutball Neocons have been at it slinging their American Heritage Foundation/Mellon-Scaife financed sh@# for 15 years, with scores of other bobble-headed punditutes keeping the hate alive. Anyone jumping on that chimp sh@t-slinging bandwagon, thinking they're adding to the public discourse gives evidence of only one thing that's certain--that they suffer some form of impaired twisted perspective that finds verbally aggressive sadism and attacks on Democrat leaders somehow self-satisfyingly pleasurable, much as the schoolyard bully likes pounding on others to deliver to himself a false notion of superiority. In Hillary's case, the hate-mongers seem to need to try to do what in psychology is called "leveling," which is a slanderous envy-motivated attempt to cut the more superior person down to the much smaller size of the
leveler. However, the only one being fooled is the leveler is the punkass leveler himself, and the likeminded trolls who get off on wicked gossip about a fine person whose fineness reflects to the Trolls what a tribe of Authoritarian-pawned fools they are, and what a pack of worthless stinking hyenas they run with.

Those of us who do not drink the Hillary-Hate koolaid, clearly see that the chumps on the Hate-Hillary shit-slinging bandwagon, are weak minded, pawned tools of the Machiavellian Authoritarians bent on destroying powerful effective experienced Liberal politicians. PNAC has moved in. Matt’s demented pairing of Hillary’s name with evil Tricky Dicky is the worst kind of cheap tabloid tactic to chain yank readers into taking on another dose of poisonous venomous lies, for the cheap thrill of it. All that Matt proves is when that he is a failed Hunter wannabe, a nasty-spirited pawn of the vilest faction of our soulless Catastrophe Capitalists in charge of propaganda delivery, and though momentarily he gets his kicks in kicking Hillary, he serves no purpose other than to further the Neocon agenda, which is to get Barack elected so the Swiftboat machine can eat him alive and finish Liberal Politics in America for good, or elect McInsane to bomb the planet to rubble so the Catastrope Capitalists can clean up once again while America dies.

I’d love to see just what kind of piece Matt could write were he to privately challenge himself to write as if his life depended on it, a brilliant convincing piece that would make the slander-poisoned public get off the collective imbecilic and wicked Hillary Hate bandwagon, feel ashamed for participating in the sh@t slinging,
and become vibrantly proud Hillary Clinton supporters with some great reasons to do so. I suggest a private challenge because of course to write a piece for publication that praises Hillary would make that huge bandwagon of shit slingers automatically attack Matt for not being one of them anymore. That would take REAL balls, the kind that Hunter Thompson had.

It might be worth your time, Matt, to think about just what really motivates Caroline and Ted Kennedy to endorse Barack. The dynasty making a move to throw the hat in again? Caroline as
V.P.? Bobby’s kids lining up. It’s rather interesting that Bill and Hillary Clinton are dismissed as political dynasties, like the Bush family, when really they are just two highly effective, intelligent, dedicated public servants, loved by the entire world, but interestingly, hated in their own country because of the effectiveness of the brainwashing delivered out of the Heritage Foundation character-assassination campaigns to destroy the two most powerful politicians whose perspectives are in direct opposition to PNAC. Why else bother to spend the 100M to take the Clintons down? Why now is American Heritage, et al, ponying up another 500M to take down the Clintons if Hillary is elected. The real story Hunter would be chasing is the irony of how the real solid good guy politicians we have are held up as wicked enemies, when nothing could be further from the truth. The People need to stand by them now, or PNAC will finish the job on the Clintons and on our nation once and for all. Stop playing for the Machiavellians, Matt. And as long as you do, you are NAWT KYOOT, even if “defiancedemon”
likes to think so. He gets his two widdo bwain cells rubbed together when Matt says hateful stuff about Hillary. Wooohoooo, demon of defiance gets his bullyboy rocks off on slandering, in an attempt to level, a powerful smart experienced female political leader

I'm sure it was you that Woody Allen had in mind when he mentioned mental masturbation in one of his movies. Are you related to Andrea Dworkin, by any chance? Not that it matters...

Anyway, I've long sinced learn that the little piggy squeals loudest when it's favorite ox is being gored. Continue squealing, girlie. The rest of will laugh silently behind our sleeve as you do so.

Right you are. The right-wing screech monkeys are just
pissed because their candidates are all losers that can
only bring up raygun's name to try to justify their
assinine positions. It's really impossible to try to
sell thir brand of bullshit to thinking prople. If their
philosophies are so good, why do they need 1200 plus radio stations to try to convince us that their way is better? Look around you people! Really see who is robbing you blind, lying to you and treating you like shit. It ain't the Democrats, people. It's those like
turdman bush; liar, fascist, thief, conspirator, flaming
sociopath and lunatic.
Vote to defeat all g.o.p. scum, all the time, every election.

defiancedemon thinks Matt is cute?

here here – cynicism for the sake of cynicism - sees nothing - builds nothing - gives nothing - a sad sad nothingness with no where to go

Right on, JMadison!!