Update to pffffft! and an announcement

January 15th, 2008

Here are a few more reads worth noting — John pounded by the terrified Right, Dennis wins a big victory and … looky here, the other side of the pond “gets it” about our wicked voting system; too bad we don’t get their news!

As well, I’d best put you guys on notice that I may not be as chatty in the near future and there may even be days when this list/blog goes dark; subscribers will have noticed that besides the Weekly, I’ll be doing astrology on Tuesdays for Planet Waves so there’s that … and now I find that my Outlook appears to be corrupted; I’m going to have to do a big backup and then see about a reload and, techy that I’m NOT, that will suck up time.

Change is knocking on the door, it’s a daily dance to flow around the challenges and commitment’s without coming undone; and some days … you know … the dragon wins. But you guys are “family of the heart” and my peeps — I promise, I’ll be around as best I can.

Jude

John Edwards is pi$$ing off all the right people.
jedreport, Mydd
Jan 12, 2008

“…if anyone’s in doubt: yes, Edwards is pissing off the right people.”

~ grannyhelen

As the primary process continues, amidst the daily barrage of broadsides fired from one campaign onto another, it’s worth remembering that John Edwards is still talking about real issues.

John Edwards’ campaign isn’t about him. It’s about us. It’s about taking back power from the wealthy elites who want to run this country and putting it in our hands. It’s about finally taking on the corporations that dominate more and more of the American economy. It’s about challenging the system.

And it’s pissing off the all right people.

Let’s start with Rupert Murdoch. My, how John Edwards has pissed that man off.

Sure, Murdoch hates John Edwards because Edwards led the way amongst presidential candidates in pulling out of the Faux-news debates, helping expose his propaganda network for what it is.

But he hates John Edwards even more because John Edwards has spoken out publicly against the monopolization of America’s media outlets into the hands of a small number of plutocrats like Murdoch. Murdoch’s media empire fired back, calling Edwards a hypocrite, leaking confidential information, all in an attempt to smear John Edwards to avoid talking about the real issues.

Just look at the bile and vitriol spilling from these New York Post headlines. Two of the most savage attacks were directed as much as Nataline Sarkisyan and Elizabeth Edwards’ as they were at Edwards.

Of course, Rupert Murdoch isn’t the only right-wing corporatist to go after John Edwards with personal attacks.

Take the far-right Washington Times, for example. In the view of the editorial pages, Edwards is a “widely scorned” “sanctimonius hypocrite.” All in all, the Times says, “Mr. Edwards’s rank hypocrisy is boundless.” On the bright side, he’s “well-coifed” but “not ready for prime time.”

Then there’s that corporate wet dream, Mitt Romney, who apparently has quite a violent streak.

Every time I listen to someone like John Edwards get on TV and say there are two Americas I just want to throw something at the TV.

~ Willard

You see, the problem isn’t that there actually are two Americas — one populated by wealthy elites like Mitt Romney, the other by just about everybody else. The problem is that people like John Edwards talk about the inequity of it all, and some day, the American public might decide to shove a big fat FU right in Mitt Romney’s face.

Hell, even the Republican party can’t stand Mitt Romney, the corporate swine.

As jamess diaried, big business is putting John Edwards on notice.

With the nation’s economy increasingly becoming a volatile issue in the presidential campaign, the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce is about to issue one very tough promise to spend millions of dollars against candidates deemed to be anti-business. (Are you listening John Edwards?)

National Review, the rag read by the nation’s conservative elite, just absolutely can’t stand John Edwards. Byron York asks the probing question: “Is Edwards a phony?” Talk about expensive haircuts — York knows a thing or two about those, I might guess. Rich Lowry affectionately (sic) calls John Edwards “The Hater” and accuses him of “unbridled hostility.”

The grand-daddy of the entire crew of corporate warriors, one William F. Buckley, actually is an exception to the “if you fear, smear” rule of thumb. He understands that populism is a grave and serious danger to the plutocracy. So he does something almost unimaginable amongst these reactionaries: he actually engages Edwards on the issues. Sort of.

John Edwards Will Give You Free Health Care
By William F. Buckley Jr.

The word among professional Democrats is that John Edwards has set the stakes on the matter of health care, and no one who wants to be president can offer less than he is offering, which is — of course — guaranteed health. That is to say, guaranteed free health care.
…

Therefore, Mr. Edwards is doing nothing more than to call for increased taxes on the wealthy. They used to call that socialized medicine, when it was instituted by Great Britain after the war. It crossed the Atlantic into Canada, which is a tidy country in which to get sick, provided you can afford to travel across the border to an American doctor.

Perhaps a tad dishonest, but you’ve got to give Buckley this: the man is genuinely scared of populism.

George Will, the bow-tied pugilist, blathers on passionately about John Edwards, calling him “synthetic,” a “histrionic huckster” who is “delusional.” Edwards:

… overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them and who therefore think that opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.

Will sees Barack Obama as the antidote to Edwards:

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee — an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic “fights” against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

In a bizarre article, The Weekly Standard picks up the same theme:

John Edwards and the Damsel in Distress
By William Tucker

IF YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND trial lawyers like John Edwards, you have to recognize their one enduring fantasy. They are knights in shining armor rescuing damsels in distress.

They’ll tell you they’re “standing up for the little guy” or “enforcing the Constitution” or “sending a message” or “teaching the big guys a lesson.” But at bottom there’s always that one image–a lonely woman, young, attractive, helpless, waiting to be rescued by some hero with a law degree.

The strange thing? The first half of the article focuses on John O’Quinn, a Houston attorney. Seems they had to work extra-hard to come up with material to fill out their laughably silly personall attack.

David Brooks plays the role of the whispering polemicist in contrast to George Will, the bow-tied pugilist. Like Will, Brooks hates John Edwards. Edwards is “old-fashioned” and thanks to Obama’s victory in Iowa, “Edwards’s political career is probably over.” (Don’t you wish, David, don’t you wish.)

David Brooks has disliked John Edwards for a long time.

In 2004, Brooks raged (emphasis added)

The problem is that he talks about poverty in an obsolete way, which suggests he has learned nothing from the past 40 years. … Edwards talks about poverty in economic terms.

This kind of talk is descended from Marxist theory, which holds that we live in the thrall of economic conditions. What the poor primarily need is more money, the theory goes.

We are moving toward a consensus on how to address the diverse problems that cause poverty. But when you go out on the campaign trail, you find politicians spreading polarizing disinformation. Edwards is right to talk about poverty, but by resorting to crude, populist rhetoric, he is leading in the wrong direction.

In 2007, David Brooks was still attacking John Edwards. When Hillary Clinton released her health care plan, Brooks questioned Edwards’ temperament:

the plan seems to have driven John Edwards around the bend. The statement he issued yesterday qualifies as the shrillest statement issued by a major presidential candidate this year.

And finally, my favorite example of John Edwards pissing of the right people: corporate lobbyists.

(A big h/t to TheShoveler for this one.)

U.S. corporate elite fear candidate Edwards
By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same — Democrat John Edwards.
…

“My sense is that Obama would govern as a reasonably pragmatic Democrat … I think Hillary is approachable. She knows where a lot of her funding has come from, to be blunt,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Stanford Group Co., a market and policy analysis group.

But Edwards, Valliere said, is seen as “an anti-business populist” and “a trade protectionist who is quite unabashed about raising taxes.”

“I think his regulatory policies, as well as his tax policies, would be viewed as a threat to business,” he said.

“The next scariest for business would be Huckabee because of his rhetoric and because he’s an unknown.”

He’s got them scared — not so much about him personally, but about the ideas he’s talking about.

That’s why we fight. ++

KUCINICH TIDE TURNS: Protest Becomes Celebration
Meryl Ann Butler, OpEdNews
January 15, 2008

A hastily planned activist event by grassroots Kucinich supporters at NBC Studios, set to protest the candidate’s sudden exclusion from the NBC’s Las Vegas debates, turned into celebration when the tables turned, today.

Kucinich has been locked out of previous debates by both AARP and ABC. But when NBC decided to follow suit, Uncle Sam finally put his foot down. In an unexpected, but stunning, display of American justice and democracy, a Las Vegas judge ruled that Kucinich must be allowed to participate in the Tuesday night presidential debate in Las Vegas.

Kucinich supporters turned in their debate protest signs for “Vote for Kucinich” signs and “Impeach” banners, and carried on, sharing the sidewalk with writers’ strikers, and eliciting shouts and honks of approval from passing cars. Several activists held Kucinich signs stating, “Give me your vote, and I’ll give you back your country.”

Activist Nina Hagen, the “mother of punk rock,” and Kucinich supporter Mary Jacobs, sang a sidewalk duet of “Amazing Grace” as people exited the NBC studios.

The Los Angeles Times reported that, “Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.

“The judge ruled it was a matter of fairness, and Nevada voters would benefit from hearing from more than just Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama. Kucinich had been invited to participate in the 6 p.m. Pacific debate Tuesday, but that invitation was rescinded last week …”

Will America now begin to wonder what it is that Kucinich stands for, that merits such extreme measures from mega-corporations like NBC, ABC, and AARP, to silence him? Because in that very question, lies the answer to who is the best candidate for the people. ++

European press: It wasn’t a miracle - Hillary won via a rigged vote
Michael Carmichael, Global Research
January 14, 2008

The mainstream Italian media are reporting both the rigging of the New Hampshire primary for Senator Hillary Clinton and the official demands for a swift, accurate and impartial recount. In an article written by Marcello Foa, one of Europe’s most respected journalists, it appears that vote tallies for all Democratic candidates as well as Republicans were reduced by Diebold vote-counting machines.

In an analysis of the hand-counted ballots, the influential Milanese newspaper - Il Giornale, reports that all Democratic candidates except Senator Hillary Clinton made gains when the New Hampshire ballots were manually tabulated, while Senator Clinton made inexplicably large gains where ballots were tabulated by computerized scanners.

According to the report, Ron Paul should have finished third in the Republican primary rather than fifth. Thus, it would appear that both Barack Obama and Ron Paul were the primary targets of vote-rigging operations in New Hampshire.

Il Giornale cites the Princeton study that alerted public attention to the vulnerability of computerized voting machines used throughout America to deliberate vote-tampering and election-rigging via manipulation of the memory cards.

The state of New Hampshire is equipped with computerized tabulation machines manufactured by Diebold, devices that have received a massive amount of negative publicity after the public awareness of vote-rigging surged dramatically following the presidential election scandal of 2000.

In previous statements, former President Jimmy Carter - who has a global reputation as one of the foremost authorities on election procedures - has frequently pointed out that the United States of America does not meet international criteria for electoral security. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves