Escape, Avoiding the Teutonic Limbo

If you are a politician you have not only to tell the truth, but also you must have a good and realistic plan to make things better.
I like Ron Paul for his manner of life and he seems to be very sympathetic, but his ideas about economy and government are disastrous and that is obvious enough to withhold people to vote for him. He should have been a writer to work out his romantic fantasies in fiction stories and than he should soon recover that public life according to Ron Paul brings more than half of the population in the Teutonic Limbo. The most cruel idea is losing regular education. He does not know what that means. Think about it. Quote:
Paul has stated: "I agree on getting rid of the IRS, but I want to replace it with nothing, not another tax. But let's not forget the inflation tax." In other statements, he has permitted consideration of a national sales tax as a compromise if the tax need cannot be reduced enough. He has advocated that the reduction of government will make an income tax unnecessary. Paul would substantially reduce the government's role in individual lives and in the functions of foreign and domestic states; he says Republicans have lost their commitment to limited government and have become the party of big government. He would eliminate many federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, calling them "unnecessary bureaucracies".
Paul would severely reduce the role of the CIA; reducing its functions to intelligence-gathering. He would eliminate operations like overthrowing foreign governments and assassinations. He says this activity is kept secret even from Congress and "leads to trouble." He also commented, "We have every right in the world to know something about intelligence gathering, but we have to have intelligent people interpreting this information."
End quote
All right, at last he writes some fine words about the CIA, showing he is very human. I don’t want to demonize the man as others were calling him a racist, he is not. With the best intentions he is terrible naïve and, of course, hyper-conservative.
About taxes I can say, that it does not matter how high taxes are if you can see by control or transparency that the benefits come back to the people and that the government is effective, affective en efficient and the rules don't restrict private life.
The business of collective facilities is best managed by a democratic government structure to supply
justice and order,
clean water,
domestic and industrial energy,
safety and infrastructure,
education,
health care,
basic science and scientific development,
cultural maintenance and development and also
pensions and assurances.
That's a lot less and a lot more than by now and by improving the government's efficiency at all levels you don't need more people to manage all the tasks in the row above because efficiency is the second weakest point in the apparatus of government. The first weakest point (or in worst case the defensive shield) is the non-transparency. You pay taxes and you don't know exactly where the money flows, how and to who. The answer is the internet but even the use of broadband transmissions is behind in the USA.
We in Europe have the same problems after two decades when we followed the USA until the beginning of the new century. Large collective facilities became privatized in the expectation that the profits would become cheap when the corporate businesses are in charge. That is the logic of the free market, but it doesn't work. Look at the railway traffic to see how the concurrence on the free market works:
Business one owns the rails
Business two/a/b owns the trains used countrywide
Business three/a/b/c owns the trains used local
Business four/a/b/c owns the trains used in subways
Business five does maintenance on trains
Business six/a/b/c/d supplies electric energy
Business seven manages the passengers schedules
Business eight manages the freight schedules
The passengers union ROVER became the largest of all unions. Safety, personal and technical, is in sharp decline and does not meet the European rules. Prices are fast inclining for years, two times doubled in 12 years, but wages of engineers are dropped down, fare dodging and related violence is exploded resulting in fewer personnel in control on the trains (typical kind of Ron Paul idea).
You understand that it drove me and a large amount of fellow train travellers back to the overcrowded road traffic.
All this trouble is called freedom by Ron Paul.
In Belgium there are some successful experiments with free public transport. It works and is also safer by social control, but you need taxes and public management to finance and regulate the system and in the end it is cheaper too voluntarily freeing the traffic lanes from much private transport.
Yes, it is big government and conservatives cry that such is very, very, very bad, near criminal. But reality shows convincing the opposite.
If the public wants freedom, let the public rule and the government has to serve the public.
Look what the corporate society has done to you!

The concept of Ron Paul is to minimize ruling and control, partly because he doesn't trust the servants of the corporate businesses who are their hired core of the government. We all understand that.
The solution is not to crack the government but to strengthen and clean the government, dropping out that servants of corporate business and defending the public interests. Taking back the privileges of corporate businesses is enough to crack them and the government can buy them out and nationalize the tasks of public interests and cut down the multi-million dollar wages of no-care but dividend managers. What is a sovereign nation while half of the country is owned by Arab princes and other foreign multi-billionaires like the family Bin Laden to decide for instance what you will eat today and tomorrow?

One of the better ideas of libertarians is that the economy has to be consumer-driven instead of supply-driven. The public has to get what they ask, buying a product that meets their needs. But the libertarian Ron Paul does not meet that idea in his concept.
I am not against small scale thinking. As an ocean sailor I bake every day's bread myself and I eat a lot of fish, which keeps me very healthy and with my length of 183 cm on a weight of 75 kg. Out on the sea I purify seawater and most of the energy I need comes from the sun/daylight. I need to take some diesel oil about enough for a daily ride of 30 miles, 0.5 kg flour a day and dry-frozen vegetables with me, while curious fresh fishes form a queue in the stern wave. That’s all to survive comfortable without seeing any coast for months. I don't ask you to adopt my ascetic way of life, but I give it as an example how less your needs can be without any suffering. So, you have a lot of freedom in your choices, when all the sham-needs are removed from the market and it will be amazing how the costs of health-care will drop.
By now you are almost liable to punishment if you withhold your kids from obesity and violent computer-games and that makes me thinking there is something rotten in the whole western world, also in Europe.
Psychologists blame this to overacted individualism. Societies seem to have lost the feeling for collectivity. How come?
When our world is ruled by the corporate society, the anonymous rulers, living in multi-million estates paid by tax cuts and the profits of decisive power, you are left behind by the governments, who serve those bosses. When the government shows no responsibility as parents of the country's household, then you get what your choice has been on the ballot, because democracy is a self-help organisation and as Michelle Obama stated: you have to take your own seat at the table of democracy.
Crack down the rulings, like Ron Paul wants to do? That's something else. Living alone in a toilet is no democracy, left alone in a toilet is the Pauline democracy. That left is too far left.
The difference with a conservative libertarian for a progressive liberal is the solidarity of the community and common responsibility and the chosen transparent government has to go ahead as an enlightened example, like parents in a national's household.
Therefore you need a capable community builder as your next President of the United States of America.

Strong Evidence Against Weak Fantasies About IX-XI

The tragic event of 9/11 was an inside job. There is strong evidence to assure this statement beyond any doubt, but the position of researchers and scientists who produced the evidential diggings is heavily undermined by concurrent fantasies and spiritism, leading to a mass of conspiracies, some very hard to believe, some total out of touch with reality or proven untrue.
All conspiracy theorists are driven by fear.
The core of their fear is the real existence of a group of neocons with the pursuit of a New World Order under their supra-national control and reality is, that a fraction of this neoconservative movement, the self-called Vulcans, dominate the administrations of Bush41 and Bush 43 with Dick Cheney as a kind of godfather of the neocons. This group is suspected to plan and realize the 9/11 operations to achieve a Pearl Harbour effect in order to make the public opinion ready by perception management or so-called mind control to start large-scaled wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The suspicions are very convincing, but have to be proved in the way of justice and law.
The dogma of the conspiritists is that any form of international discussion and cooperation, out of sight as behind closed doors, but even not secret, is part of the neoconservative strategy, towards the supra-national New World Order and that can’t be true. It can’t be true because of the lack of unity and the existence of concurrent interests between several governmental, non-governmental and business parties in the Real World’s political theatre. Most politicians and business leaders in the world are strongly opposing the principles of the neocons. The neocons are as unrealistic dreamers as the conspiritists are. The platform of the neocons is supposed to be the United Nations, so not the USA administration where they are in charge yet.
This is very clear absolutely untrue and endless away from reality. Are we from the same planet? That’s also the question in circles of conspiritists, but they are very serious about the alleged evidence that extra-terranians or their helpers are ruling or infiltrating our world and so we enter the magic spheres of UFO’s and crop-circles, the modern variation of solipsism.
Well, you have moderate conspiritists and extreme ones, but they all are damaging the message of true reality, that the tragic event of 9/11 was an inside job and a false flag, which by almost all conspiritists became subscribed. Dear Yo, deliver us from that evil conspiritists.
False flag operations are not a new invention of the neocons to start a war. The planned Operation Northwoods rejected by J. F. Kennedy is a known example, designed to start a war against Cuba. Earlier, US President Roosefelt did not use foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbour attack to bring the fleet at sea in defensible position and gained the way of opportunity to take part in the war. But the most deeply encroached false flag operation is the 9/11 disaster and it is the most characteristic one with all the trimmings and a lot of fuss.
Of course conspiritists hurled themselves on the issue, but that does not mean that the conspiracy is all nonsense as the most ideas of die hard conspiritists. The problem is, that conspiritists use not sufficient proven evidence to claim the truth and if serious scientists and experts do that with more serious work, the idea of a conspiracy, false flag operation or inside job is already contaminated with the wildest fantasies and a lot of fantastic consequences, out of touch with reality.

We know and we can prove that the Twintowers came down by explosives and we know and can prove that WTC #7 the same day was pulled by controlled demolition. We also know that the cell phone calls from planes to the ground were not possible at the time, so it is faked and we know that no Boeing attacked the Pentagon. We can prove that and the evidence is overwhelming and scientific confirmed. There is also overwhelming indisputable evidence that the administration hides the truth and is involved in an large-scale cover-up operation. The self-named Vulcans is a group of neocons which is dominating present in the administration of Bush43 needed an attack like Pearl Harbour to drive their policies through in the direction of their goals, world dominance by war.
In a set of short articles with links to other sources this blog will provide you with the serious and proven evidence on the base of facts and science.

McCain's Speech Widely Panned

The Lime Green Monster:
It may be a superficial quip with Senator McCain's speech tonight, but as Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic noted, in presidential politics, "theatrics matter."
The choice of a lime green backdrop was, to put it kindly, not wise. Beyond representing a jarring visual for even the most colorblind political viewer, the set up was clearly a distraction from the speech itself. Take a look at some of the reviews:
Ambinder: "I wish I had a screen grab... but the green background is very weird and very jarring. On this stage, theatrics matter."
Matt Yglesias notes: "...it's interesting that he's shifted his aesthetic from his old black and white 'fascist' aesthetic to a new green and white Islamofascist aesthetic."
Andrew Sullivan: "From the re-branded green background to the silly attempt to capitalize on Democratic divisions to the Clintonian cooptation of an Obama meme - "a leader we can believe in" - McCain's opening gambit in the general election was, in my judgment, underwhelming."
Atrios: "It'll make you look like the cottage cheese in a lime jello salad. Always a good look for an older gentlemen... The aesthetics of McCain's speech, just mercifully completed before a slightly energized crowd of literally dozens, was awesome in how dreadful it was. No matter what Harold Ford thinks, who was somehow thoroughly moved by lime-jello McCain.
This is not to distract from McCain's address; that too was poorly reviewed. The most biting of the criticisms came from CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, who intoned, moments after its conclusion: "That was awful! That was pathetic!"
Josh Marshall, over at TPM, noted: "Here's how bad it is. All the Fox commentators are giving competing explanation for why McCain's speech sucked."
But if you think this was strictly a liberal prerogative, here is a sampling of the Republican response to McCain's general election launch.
Here's Mark Levin over at National Review's The Corner: "Not to offend those who might be offended, but this speech is a mash and tough to digest. You have to get through the self-congratulatory praise of independence and commander-in-chief pose from the Senate, then you have to try to follow the inconsistency of some of his big-government ideas vs. his anti-big-government rhetoric, and his inconsistency even on his supposed strength -- the surge in Iraq vs. closing GITMO and conferring additional rights on the detainees."
Summing up GOP sentiment was prominent Republican media consultant, Alex Castellanos, speaking on CNN: "Last I checked this was not a speech-making contest, thank God."
Let's get serious!

To Bring Dignity Back to America: He won!

Victory Speech of Senator Barack Obama on the Final Primary Night
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
St. Paul, Minnesota
As Prepared for Delivery

Tonight, after fifty-four hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.
Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said - because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another - a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
I want to thank every American who stood with us over the course of this campaign - through the good days and the bad; from the snows of Cedar Rapids to the sunshine of Sioux Falls. And tonight I also want to thank the men and woman who took this journey with me as fellow candidates for President.
At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. I have not just competed with them as rivals, I have learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party, and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.
That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.
We've certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who's shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning - even in the face of tough odds - is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children's Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency - an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn't just about the party in charge of Washington, it's about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.
All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say - let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.
In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.
Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.
It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.
It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college - policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.
And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians - a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer.
So I'll say this - there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.

Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years - especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.
We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It's time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It's time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It's time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda's leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century - terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That's what change is.
Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy - tough, direct diplomacy where the President of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for. We must once again have the courage and conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy. That's what the American people want. That's what change is.
Change is building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but the work and workers who created it. It's understanding that the struggles facing working families can't be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, but by giving a the middle-class a tax break, and investing in our crumbling infrastructure, and transforming how we use energy, and improving our schools, and renewing our commitment to science and innovation. It's understanding that fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity can go hand-in-hand, as they did when Bill Clinton was President.
John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy - cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota - he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.
Maybe if he went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand that she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and wealthy. She needs us to pass health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it. That's the change we need.
Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators. That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future - an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need.
And maybe if he spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, he'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind; that we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America. That's why I'm running for President.
The other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a debate I look forward to. It is a debate the American people deserve. But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon - that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first.
Despite what the good Senator from Arizona said tonight, I have seen people of differing views and opinions find common cause many times during my two decades in public life, and I have brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the South Side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools. I've sat across the table from law enforcement and civil rights advocates to reform a criminal justice system that sent thirteen innocent people to death row. And I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break; to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent; and to reduce the influence of lobbyists who have all too often set the agenda in Washington.
In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.
So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.
So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.
So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause.
So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.
And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

How Hillary Clinton Wins!

Coming out of the turmoil of the sixties, the 1972 McGovern rules, as they came to be known, radically altered the way Democrats pick their presidential nominees, opening up the political process by mandating proportional inclusion of previously excluded constituencies -- African Americans, voters under 30, and women.
All of the reforms adopted then, and modified over the years, have been in play this year, including the expanded role in party proceedings of blacks, women, and the young; the required use of proportional representation; and superdelegates.
One reform stands out particularly in Obama's march to victory: the much wider use of open caucuses as a key component of the nomination process. Caucuses differ from primaries in that participants M must spend many hours in a complex rule-ridden bargaining process that determines how a precinct or ward will allocate its support among the presidential candidates.
With the existing rules in charge Hillary Clinton can not win. Therefore she has decided to change the rules in her favour. There will be no delegates count but only a count of popular votes. By Clinton’s decision 15 states are expelled and in this way Clinton wins the nomination.

15 states not counted by Hillary Clinton and 13 are won by Barack Obama

Iowa . . . . . . 57 delegates . . January 3 . . 38% - 29%
Nevada . . . . . 33 delegates . . January 8 . . 45% - 51%*
Alaska . . . . . 18 delegates . . February 5. . 75% - 25%
Am. Samoa. . . . 9 delegates . . . . . . . . . 42% - 57%
Colorado . . . . 71 delegates . . . . . . . . . 67% - 32%
Idaho. . . . . . 23 delegates . . . . . . . . . 80% - 17%
Kansas . . . . . 41 delegates . . . . . . . . . 74% - 26%
Minnesota. . . . 88 delegates . . . . . . . . . 66% - 32%
New Mexico . . . 38 delegates . . . . . . . . . 48% - 49%*
North Dakota . . 31 delegates . . . . . . . . . 61% - 37%
Nebraska . . . . 31 delegates . . February 9. . 68% - 32%
Washington . . . 97 delegates . . . . . . . . . 68% - 31%
Maine. . . . . . 34 delegates . . February 10 . 59% - 40%
Hawaii . . . . . 29 delegates . . February 19 . 76% - 24%
Wyoming. . . . . 18 delegates . . March 8 . . . 61% - 38%

Now, some 36 years after the adoption of the McGovern rules, caucuses as a vehicle for the selection of convention delegates have empowered a key Obama constituency: young and relatively well-educated social-cultural liberals -- just the class of political activists that Ickes and the Clintons came out of and made salient.
In the arcane caucus procedures, with turnout ranging from only two to eight percent of the eligible Democratic electorate (compared to voter participation rates in primaries ranging from 20 to 35 percent), smart and strategically savvy party activists make up a disproportionately large share of participants.
"The caucuses made Obama, there is no doubt about it," argues University of Wisconsin political scientist Byron Shafer, the foremost expert on changes since the 1960s in the Democratic nominating process.

"Caucuses were the preferred institution of the reformers. The argument of the reform theorists was not about the gross bulk of participation, but about the character of the participation," Shafer said. In a primary, "you could go and vote, but it was limited: you pull the lever that was it. In a caucus, it wasn't that turnout would be lower, it was the quality of the turnout was higher."
It would be difficult to overestimate the consequences for Obama of Democratic Party reforms promoting caucuses. If the caucus states were eliminated, Obama would not be the one on the verge of declaring victory.
As of June 2, according to RealClearPolitics, Obama had a 157 delegate vote lead over Clinton, 2072 to 1915.
In the 14 states that picked some or all of their delegates through caucus systems this year, Obama won 400 delegates to Clinton's 193, a 207 delegate advantage that more than accounts for his overall delegate lead.
An analysis (pdf) published on TalkLeft found that total Democratic voter participation in the caucus states amounted to 1.1 million people, compared to the 32.4 million voters in Democratic primaries, a ratio of 30 to one. Caucus participants made up 3.2 percent of the total of 33.5 million primary voters and caucus goers combined.
In contrast to the relatively close results in most primary states, Obama won many of the caucus states by huge margins, often substantially exceeding 60 percent. As a consequence, he piled up large numbers of delegates in the relatively low turnout contests.
The TalkLeft analysis noted that Clinton won 11 more delegates than Obama in the New Jersey primary, which she won by 112,128 votes, while Obama won 12 more delegates than Clinton in the Idaho caucuses which he won by 13,225 votes. Similarly, Clinton netted 12 delegates by winning the Pennsylvania primary by 214,115 votes, while Obama came out ahead by 14 delegates by winning the Kansas caucuses by 17,710 votes.
Charles Stewart III of MIT did a separate analysis of primaries and caucuses with results similar to those of the Talk Left study, finding that in primary states, Clinton won 1,557.5 delegates, 16 more delegates than Obama's 1,521.5. In caucus states, Stewart found, Obama won 366 delegates, or 191 more than Clinton's 175.
In private, a number of Clinton strategists now acknowledge that they made a disastrous, if not fatal, mistake in failing to recognize the profound impact of the caucuses on the delegate count.
"We just thought we'd win the primaries, and the caucuses would follow along," one key Clinton strategist said. "It's on the top of the list of things we'd like to do over."

Yes, but Hillary does not wait.
She has changed the rules and so she wins. Period.

How McClellan Prettifies Bush

“Ambitious, Idealistic Vision of Freedom?” Forget it!

Former Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan is accomplishing several things with his “blockbuster” book “What Happened”. He’s making a lot of easy money, as befits an opportunist of flexible morality who admittedly stuck with the Bush administration, even as its amorality and penchant for lying to the American people became clearly apparent to him. He’s earning praise from objective journalists and scholars in general. He thus partially redeems his own historical legacy as a minor figure in what will be remembered as a notorious lying administration. But he’s prettifying that administration rather than damning it.
According to the former press secretary, Bush misled the nation, hyping dubious intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. But he did so, McClellan declares, out of a naive commitment to the ideal of democracy in the Middle East. And he didn’t deliberately lie. He was merely the victim of bad advice, his own intellectual limitations, his disinclination to ask questions and his belief that being a wartime president was his ticket to greatness. McClellan states repeatedly that he continues to feel affection for the man responsible for perhaps a million Iraqi deaths and over 4300 American and other coalition ones.
McClellan attributes Bush’s relentless push for war on “an ambitious and idealistic post-9/11 vision of transforming the Middle East through the spread of freedom.” So his worst sin was a naïve effort at do-good-ism!
He doesn’t mention the more plausible reasons for Bush’s assault on a sovereign country described by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as illegal. He doesn’t mention oil, the administration’s push for the privatization of Iraq’s oil industry (which will result in U.S. control), or the geopolitical importance of controlling the flow of oil from Iraq in future crisis situations including war. He doesn’t mention the advantages to U.S. imperialism of permanent military bases in the heart of the Middle East.
For the neocons there is no question but that the U.S. should have bases in the Middle East, and Cheney is known to favor their establishment preparatory to a future confrontation with China.
McClellan doesn’t discuss these matters.
It’s all well and good for the world for McClellan to turn on his former boss and join such insiders as Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, and Lawrence Wilkerson in documenting Bush’s mendacious pre-war use of fear-mongering. But isn’t he engaging in perverse apologetics of his own? Alluding to the passage cited above, a blogger on Oprah.com Community writes, “I guess this knocks the wind out of the sales of the Bush haters, and blows the ‘conquer Iraq for oil’ theory, doesn’t it?”
Actually, the war-for-oil-theory has always been simplistic, since it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, which isn’t oil company profits or even U.S. consumers’ access to cheap oil. It is the enhancement of the geopolitical position of U.S. imperialism vis-à-vis any potential rivals during what the neocons call the “New American Century” and (as a corollary to that project) the enhancement of the security (regional hegemony) of Israel. In any case, the idea that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to encourage freedom in Iraq only surfaced after the fact, in August 2003, as all the earlier stated reasons for invasion had become discredited. That’s when Condoleezza Rice gave a speech in Dallas in 2003 cynically associating liberation of Iraq with the Civil Rights Movement in the US.
"But we should not," insisted the World's Most Powerful Woman, as though she were dealing with an actual problem, in a speech to the National Association of Black Journalists in Dallas August 7, "let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom. And we must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities.
We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East."
But National Security Adviser and former Chevron Oil board member Condoleezza Rice did not identify those who disparage Third World "freedom" and alleged U.S. efforts to impose it. She's obviously not targeting L. Paul Bremer III, civil administrator in Iraq, who told the Washington Post June 28, "Elections held too early can be destructive," adding that while there's "no blanket rule" against democracy in Iraq, and he's "not personally opposed to it," it must take place "in a way that takes care of our concerns" and "done very carefully." In fact he is saying “the Iraqis are culturally just not ready for freedom, and just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities," at least until they learn how to say "Yes, Boss!"
Rice is not targeting Henry Kissinger, who as U.S. Secretary of State, following the democratic election of Salvador Allende in 1970, declared, "Chile shouldn't be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible," and proceeded to help organize a bloody fascist coup, producing a regime more suitable to those Latinos down there.
She is not trying to chasten Vice President Dick Cheney, who as a Wyoming representative in Congress in 1986 voted against a resolution urging the apartheid government of South Africa (which then-President Reagan pronounced America's "closest friend" in Africa) to release Nelson Mandela, freedom fighter, democrat, from prison.
No, no, no. Condi's saying: Those criticizing the U.S. occupation of Iraq are the moral equivalents of the KKK.
The suggestion that this was Bush’s priority all along just isn’t plausible. Had he been committed to democracy, he would have conceded the election to Al Gore in 2000; had he been committed to freedom, he would not have shoved the Patriot Act down the throats of Congressmen in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 nor gleefully endorsed rendition and the indefinite detention and torture of noncombatants captured or bought from bounty hunters in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Bush supporters like the blogger quoted above will take comfort in McClellan’s book. They will think it lets their man off the hook.
Finally, McClellan damns the news media for being complicit enablers of the march to war. Having performed a central role in the dissemination of disinformation, he chastises the Fifth Estate for “covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it…” He notes accurately enough that the media neglected “their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding.”
He notes that “the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam Hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people, the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere on covering the march to war, instead of the necessity of war. In this case, the liberal media did not live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”