Friday’s political round-up

September 14, 2007

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* Increasing the Democrats’ chances of picking up another Senate seat in 2008, former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is poised to announce that she will take on incumbent Sen. John Sununu (R) next year. Several polls already show Shaheen with a double-digit lead over Sununu in hypothetical match-ups, and the DSCC all but begged Shaheen to give up her post at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and enter the race. It will be a rematch of the 2002 race in which the state Republican Party broke several laws cheating on Sununu’s behalf.

* Fred Thompson already took some heat for chickening out of the last debate for the Republican presidential candidates, but that won’t stop him from ducking the next two. Next week, in Ft. Lauderdale, there will be a “Values Voters” debate sponsored by religious right groups, and Thompson has already turned down the invitation. Moreover, Thompson said yesterday that he’ll also probably skip a PBS-sponsored debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore on September 27th. The next debate on the GOP calendar in October 9.

* Speaking of Thompson, the actor/lobbyist/politician picked up his first Senate endorsement from outside Tennessee yesterday, when Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi threw his support behind the former senator.

* Rudy Giuliani’s former campaign manager, Fran Reiter, has decided to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Reiter, who ran Giuliani’s 1997 mayoral campaign, and also served as a deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration, said this week that the former mayor has “backed away from” the values he embraced while in office. (If Giuliani and Clinton win their respective parties nominations, this would make for a fun ad. “I’m Rudy Giuliani’s former campaign manager, and I’m supporting Hillary Clinton…”)

* Joe Biden hasn’t exactly been racking up the endorsements lately, but he picked up a pretty good one this week when Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (D) announced his support for the Delaware senator. In Iowa, Clinton still enjoys the most state legislative endorsements, with 16.

I am tired of the media blackout on the only real candidates in this race, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. If you listen to the debates, they are the true winners, but corporate media won’t even mention their names. There is a blackout on all candidates who are not corporate stooges. Thats why they insist Clinton & Obama are the frontrunners; they aren’t. They are the polished product being sold us by corporate interests such as big oil, pharmany, and insurance.
I listened to Dennis Kucinich on Ed Schultz show on the 12th. He is articulate, has a mind, wants to restore our civil rights and back out of NAFTA until the laws are more laborer-supportive. When asked about illegal immigration, he said the reasons were also in NAFTA’s wage-slashing methods. They come here to survive because the wages are at an all time low in Mexico.
He is not a “dove”, he believes in providing for our common defense, not invading other countries like the Bush Administration.
I went to google and entered “Kucinich.” I was led to a website which showed his photo with a red cancellation mark through the face stamped “traitor.” It was almost impossible to get rid of the site…there were no links to take me to his true website: http://www.kucinich.us
He is called a traitor by the neocons because he went to Syria, and some other countries to get their input on the Iraq mess that continues to fester. That is what the USA used to call Statesmanship. Again, Kucinich has a mind. Listening to him for 3 hours where he took unscreened, unscripted phone calls tells me he is the quality of candidate we need desperately if we are to save this country from total destruction and dictatorship. He reminds me of FDR and Abe Lincoln. He knows what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck as a lower middle class family….his family moved many times, and sometimes had no money for housing.
I am ready to turn off media tv for good, and switch to the Internet for news. It is propaganda, and it isn’t very good.

  • Here’s a thought: The best thing for Democrats would be if Bush pulled out so the next President isn’t saddled with his failure. Bush won’t do that. But Bush wants to have it both ways, holding the course while pretending the draw down of troops to pre-surge levels is a withdrawal for the 2008 elections.

    Okay. If he wants to claim we’re pulling out, let. him. The war is over — we’re leaving! Bush has conceded we’ve done all we can, and the troops are starting to come home, and will continue to come home when the next President takes office!

    Let’s implant this in people’s minds now. Bush ended the war, and the next President gets to start with a new slate — provided Bush’s withdrawal doesn’t unravel and prove as incompetent as his occupation. The question now is HOW we withdrawal — and we need to start going on record pointing out how Bush is going about it in the wrong way.

    If he wants to have it both ways, why can’t we? We’ve forced Bush to pull out, with the albatross of Iraq still around his party’s neck.

  • Marilyn (#1), re: “I am ready to turn off media tv for good”

    We did that years and years ago, after the spirit crushing political year of 1968. We’ve never looked back, and we can’t fathom how other people can maintain mental health watching that crap night after night. Other than a few sinful pleasures (which we tape so we can skip the ads), the only thing we watch live on TeeVee is baseball, and even that is almost always better on the radio. For us, TeeVee is a machine on which to play Netflix.

    We used to enjoy TeeVee back when there were three networks (plus the useless Lawrence Welk channel). Tthey all employed very good writers. Now, those are the first to get the axe whenever the corporation decides it needs investment capital to muscle someone out of the petroleum or toothpaste business.

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