What does he do today? He releases a letter about an hour or so ago asking that FL and MI delegates be seated in full. The coup is complete.

He has kneecapped Hillary for good!. As for Harold Ickes, Obama literally took the wind out of his sails…. he is the one who said “we reserve the right to take this to the credentials committee”. Nope not going to allow even a chance for Hillary to take it to the credentials committee, can’t do that, that would be fair.

And I am the anointed one, Obama, and I don’t play fair!

Yeah, well here is commentary on Obama’s selfish and self centered, game ending letter to the DNC’s crudentials committee:

The Democratic presidential nomination all but officially his, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, today asked the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee to urge the full seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations, which had been penalized for holding their contests early against party rules.

I don’t know why he asked them. According to Obama he owns the DNC lock, stock and barrel. Obama and the Democratic Party must be desperate! The number of registered Democrats dropped by 2% in July. Political expediency anyone?

“Party unity calls for the delegates from Florida and Michigan to be able to participate fully alongside the delegates from the other states and territories,’ Obama wrote in a letter to credentials committee chairs Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt, Jr., and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo. “Accordingly, I ask that the Credentials Committee, when it meets on August 24 to approve the delegates for the National Convention, pass a resolution that would entitle each delegate from Florida and Michigan to cast a full vote.”

The chairs responded in a statement saying they ‘deeply appreciate and value Senator Obama’s perspective on this important issue. This matter will be the top priority for the Credentials Committee when we meet on August 24th. As always our goal is to ensure a fair process and a unified Democratic Party so that we can win in November.”

In May, before Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, withdrew from the race, Obama was urging a very different outcome for the two states’ delegates, urging the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee to penalize both states.

What did you do Obama payoff the RBC too like you paid off super delegates? We know what Obama did at that meeting along with the crooked, rule breaking RBC and DNC.

Well I remember May 31st like it was yesterday. There I was driving around Montana on the Veteran’s for Hillary Tour, in an SUV, a disabled Navy veteran and three passengers pushing Hillary’s agenda. It was our last day of the tour. We had just returned to East Helena, we were planning a leisurely dinner at a pizza joint, when my phone rang, the voice on the other end was mad as hell when they gave me the news, 1/2 vote for FL and MI and the RBC stole 4 of Hillary’s delegates, netting her 24 delegates for the day.

Well I won’t repeat what I said, let’s just say they were words only a sailor would be proud of, but someone read my lips, and then told me to “put a happy face on” before I entered the pizza joint!

Talk about condescending, but then what did I expect, this person had just sent out an e-mail which I received too, that said, Obama and the Muslim thing is going to be a problem for the Democratic Party. This was in response to conversations at an America Legion Hall. And this from a volunteer for Hillary!

Now with pure unadulterated dislike for all things Hillary Clinton, even after she did fundraising with him, Obama, sends this letter out. Yeah! I did it. I won! Nananana! Match Set Game! Obama is now telling Hillary and her supporters “to eat his shorts”.

Well Obama, you with the arrogant, narcissistic personality can kiss my grits!

Florida and Michigan will not forget!

And Obama don’t be so sure you win, November is right around the corner! PUMA is watching you!

CNN reports that Hillary swept Puerto Rico in a win that contradicts previous voting patterns in this primary:

Clinton won 70 percent of the male vote, 65 percent of voters under 30, 70 percent of voters who attended college, and 66 percent of voters with an income of over $50,000. Clinton also performed strongly among those demographic groups that have long constituted the backbone of her base. She won 70 percent of female voters, 77 percent of those over 65, 69 percent who did not attend college, and 71 percent of voters with an income of $15,000 or less.

Nevertheless, here’s how the NYT reports Hillary’s win in Puerto Rico:

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, called the island’s primary “another convincing win for Hillary” on CNN, and Mr. Obama conceded the race to her in a speech in Mitchell, S.D. “She is going to be a big asset going into November” in efforts to defeat the Republicans, Mr. Obama said.

A big asset? Only an unscrupulous sexist ass would say such a thing, and we now know beyond all doubt that Barack Obama sets the gold standard in sexism.

Obama appears to be under the impression that he can appropriate Hillary’s victories and more importantly, Hillary’s supporters.Can I say it any more clearly: I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA. Obama not only doesn’t represent me, he exemplifies all that I find despicable in politicians. What we’ve learned about Obama since this primary season began is that he is the complete opposite of who he claims to be.As Deb Cupples points out, the RBC assigning half votes to Florida delegates was business as usual with Obama: a two-faced hypocrite  stealing votes from Hillary. How do you think Obama’s  come this far? We all know that the majority of his “votes’ came from caucusing and we know how the caucuses worked. Working people, those with young kids, and the elderly among others, couldn’t get to the caucuses, and the reports of Obama’s thugs threatening, destroying, forging, and corrupting the caucus process are manifold.  Has the DNC done anything to check out these reports? Not to my knowledge. The question that I’m asking myself now: does the DNC represent me? Why did they give Obama four of Hillary’s Michigan delegates? Anglachel posted a theory about this:  

Taking away delegates from Hillary and handing them to Obama, however, is not within their purview, and this will come back to bite them in the ass. First, as I said above, it indicates that the internal count of the Obama delegates is weaker than they claim. Four delegates should not make that big a difference, yet they obviously do even with the count reduced by the 50% rule. There is no other rational reason to force this misallocation for such a small number of delegates, given the blowback that will occur.    

What’s this blowback going to look like? According to the NYT,  Hillary and her supporters need to fall in line behind Obama:

In order for us to be successful in November, the runner-up is going to have to go all out in support of the nominee,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The runner-up is going to have to be there from Day One. The support is going to have to be more than just lip service.    

However, I strongly agree with Harp, a commenter on NQ, who writes:

I have been a Democrat longer than Hillary and if she endorses BO she will lose my respect and my vote. This is not about Obama anymore. This is about the pillaging of the party. The DNC are corrupt and MUST be purged. No other outcome is acceptable.    

Make no mistake: Barack Obama and his campaign opposed counting 100% of Florida’s Democratic primary vote. At the same time, the campaign wants public relations points for appearing to want to enfranchise Florida — enough points to get Floridians’ votes if Obama becomes the nominee.

This I learned from watching the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee hearing today (part of it anyway, as the live video streaming conked out several times).

At one point, RBC member Tina Flournoy point-blank asked U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler whether the Obama campaign supported making100% of Florida’s primary vote count (instead of 50%). Wexler was the Obama campaign’s chosen representative for that hearing. A simple “yes” or “no” would have sufficed.

Did Mr. Wexler directly answer the question? No. Instead, he said:“…We are here to argue for the maximum number of delegates that this committees’ rules allow.”

Given that Mr. Wexler had earlier claimed that the RBC has authority to restore only 50% of Florida’s vote, it’s obvious that Mr. Wexler was essentially saying “No, Obama’s campaign does not support restoring 100% of Florida’s vote.”

For some reason, Mr. Wexler had trouble uttering that simple, one-syllable word “No” — in front of all the media folks, anyway.

Noticing that Mr. Wexler had failed to directly answer her question, Ms. Flournoy asked it again. And again, Mr. Wexler made a similar statement that didn’t include the word “No.”

But we viewers (and Ms. Flournoy) clearly understood the Obama campaign’s position: don’t count all of Florida’s votes.Not only did Mr. Wexler tap dance like a young Buddy Ebsen, but also his argument was flawed.

A key argument of us Floridians was that the RBC never should have punished Florida Dems, because Florida’s overwhelmingly Republican legislature had moved the primary election to a date earlier than the DNC’s rules allowed.Did I mention that Wexler is an Obma-supporting, U.S. congressman who represents Florida’s voters? With friends like Wexler….

Incidentally, here’s the current breakdown of Florida’s legislature: House, 76 Republicans to 43 Democrats; Senate, Republicans 26 to Democrats 14. The numbers have been roughly the same since at least 2001. In short, Florida’s Democrats have no power to block or pass any legislation. It’s numerically impossible.

Moreover, the DNC’s own rules [e.g., 21(c)(7)] allowed the RBC to not strip any of Florida’s delegates if it had found that Florida’s Dem leaders had acted in good faith to stop the moving of the primary date.So, why did Obama’s campaign object to counting 100% of Florida’s votes (aside from the fact that doing so would have given Hillary Clinton more delegates)?

Here’s Obama’s basic argument: none of the candidates campaigned in Florida; thus, it was an unfair election. One Obama-friendly RBC member projected that if candidates had campaigned in Florida, as many as 3 million Floridians would have voted (instead of the record-high 1.7 million that actually did vote).

Yes, that RBC member pulled the 3 million out of her… ear.

Did Obama’s campaign representatives really believe that Florida’s voters were in a vacuum? We get newspapers, Internet, radio, the cable channels…. We saw multiple televised debates involving all the Dem candidates before our January 29 primary.

Furthermore, why does the Obama campaign think that Obama was disadvantaged from not having campaigned in Florida? It’s equally possible that if Hillary had campaigned in Florida, she would have won by an even bigger margin than she actually did?

And if Florida’s primary election was truly unfair because no candidates had campaigned in that state, then is it any fair to count even 50% of Florida’s vote? If the election were truly unfair, than none of the votes should have counted — by the Obama campaign’s logic, anyway.

And yet, Obama’s campaign pushed for the counting of only 50% of Florida’s votes. Sometimes, logic takes a back seat to self interest.

In short, the Obama Campaign’s argument was unpersuasive and based on something even less substantive than marshmallows.

Another thing that bothered me about the hearing was the crowd. People actually interrupted with applause (and hoot and hollers and whistles) whenever a witness or committee member said something in favor of not counting Florida’s or Michigan’s votes (i.e, a pro-Obama point).

It sounded like a sporting event or a kegger at a frat house. I half expected the camera to zoom in on a young, rambunctious lad lighting his own farts.

I’m not saying that more Obama supporters were in the audience than Hillary supporters. I have no way of knowing. It might have been that the Hillary supporters in the audience were simply more accustomed to conducting themselves in manner appropriate to such a hearing.

One other thing bothered me regarding the unruly audience: the RBC co-chairs didn’t insist that the audience settle down. Given that the DNC is a private body (which allowed citizen spectators as a courtesy), I suspect that the committee co-chairs easily could have told the audience that if it continued to erupt in hoots and hollers, the RBC would clear the room of spectators. Judges make such threats all the time, and they usually work.

Perhaps those RBC co-chairs enjoyed having pro-Obama outbursts interrupting both witnesses and committee members.

The bottom line is that Sen. Obama got what he wanted: only half of Florida’s votes will count in the (not so) Democratic nominating process. His campaign pushed for this, purportedly to promote party unity — i.e., to get votes in November if he becomes the nominee.

If Obama wants only half of Florida’s vote, then he shouldn’t expect more than half of Florida’s Dems to get behind him. At this point, frankly, Obama would be lucky to get even half — given that he got far less than half of Florida’s votes during the primary.Memeorandum has commentary.

Dorothea LANGE, “Migrant Mother,” 1936

A friend paraphrases a famous story to illustrate why she may vote Republican for the first time in 40 years: in the late 1960s, when the feminist movement was still thought of as a novelty, a boorish male reporter asked the heterosexual Gloria Steinem if she was a lesbian. Steinem responded, “I am if you’re the alternative.”

There is a growing consensus at No Quarter and elsewhere that Obama’s tactics have made him an unacceptable alternative to Hillary, and many of us will be voting for McCain, writing in Hillary, or staying home.

As Hillary continues to increase her popular vote lead and absolutely crush Obama in critical states, many are looking at a potential Obama nomination as a coup d’état similar to Florida in 2000, facilitated by the neo-liberal-Dean wing of the Party, African American power brokers, and the Clinton-hating media. Regarding Florida and Michigan, Anglachel writes:

Lack of legitimacy means relying on force to win. If you have to bully people to make them be quiet, you have lost legitimacy. If you have to remove votes from the contest in order to win, you have lost legitimacy. The objection Hillary supporters have to “teh Rulz” to exclude Michigan and Florida is how nakedly they are used to force the numbers themselves into submission.

A commentator agrees with Anglachel and points out that:

The FL/MI debacle not only robbed Clinton of delegates, but it robbed her of momentum that would have affected later contests. It robbed her of frontrunner status. In fact, with those 2 states and Super Tuesday, she probably would have been close to winning.

An Obama nomination — after the selective but intentional disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida, the relentless race-baiting by Obama and his surrogates, and the venom from his supporters — is repugnant to many of us who, to use Arthur Schlesinger’s phrase, are unrepentant and unreconstructed liberals and New Dealers.

What we are witnessing is nothing short of the breakup of the historic Democratic coalition. Chris Bowers, Obama supporter and writer at Open Left, dreams of a cultural change in an Obama Democratic Party which is almost a parody of the brie and Chardonnay stereotype:

There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades.

Further illustrating their break with traditional liberalism, Markos Moulitsas has declared himself a libertarian Democrat, in other words: a politically correct Republican. These neo-liberals are really proposing a Party run by those who have little need for government and instead focus on identity politics, environmentalism, post-partisan government, and the rejection of American exceptionalism. The neo-liberals demonize the traditional Democratic base of poor white voters precisely because these voters rely on government and expect their leadership to fight partisan battles on their behalf. They are also deeply patriotic and weary of the moral relativism put forward by the likes of Jeremiah Wright.

Because of Obama’s anemic performances in West Virginia and Kentucky, the campaign and its supporters imagine a new Party. Sean Wilentz writes

the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of “change” - nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

It remains to be seen whether the breakup of the Democratic Party more resembles (A) the McGovern disaster of 1972 and 20 years in the wilderness, or (B) a dismantling of the current coalition more akin to the Republicans replacing the Whigs in 1856.

In whatever form our Party takes, the perpetrators of this breakup are the Obama campaign and the neo-liberals. It’s their demonization of low-income white Americans which is largely the cause of our coalition’s breakup. Wilentz continues:

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party’s inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom “progressive” pundits and bloggers disdain variously as “Nascar man,” “uneducated,” “low information” whites, “rubes, fools, and hate-mongers” who live in the nation’s “shitholes.”

Hillary’s ability to keep this race so close, with virtually no African American support, shows Obama’s incredible weakness as a candidate. This is not because of race, as the neo-liberal race-baiters would have you believe, but because Obama does not articulate an economic message which appeals to low-income whites. According to Wilentz:

Every poll shows that economics, health care, and national security are the leading issues for white working class voters - and for Latino working class voters as well. These constituencies have cast positive ballots for Hillary Clinton not because she is white, but because they regard her as better on these issues. Obama’s campaign and its passionate supporters refuse to acknowledge that these voters consider him weaker — and that Clinton’s positions, different from his, as well as her experience actually attract support. Instead they impute racism to working class Democrats who, the polls also show, happen to be liberal on every leading issue. The effort to taint anyone who does not support Obama as motivated by racism has now become a major factor in alienating core Democrats from Obama’s campaign.

The class warfare now raging in the Democratic Party, while both sides ostensibly are on the Left, is actually the classic struggle between the proletariat workers (blue-collar whites and Latinos) and the petite bourgeoisie (neo-liberals). African Americans have mostly gone to Obama because of the historic nature of his candidacy; many, however, were pushed to Obama by the race-baiting wedge utilized by Obama and the neo-liberals, a tactic identical in form and result as that used by Lee Atwater and other Republican operatives. Obama’s hostility towards the white working class, as seen with his bitter-gate remarks, is the exact framework from which many of the neo-liberals view this struggle:

Obama’s dismissal of white working people represents a sea-change in the Democrats’ basic identity as the workingman’s party - one that has been coming since the late 1960s, when large portions of the Left began regarding white workers as hopeless and hateful reactionaries.

Arthur Schlesinger, eminent historian and New Frontiersman, foresaw the dangers of identity politics as a substitute for progressive policy. He believed in an activist government which should be used “to improve opportunities and to enlarge freedoms for ordinary people.” The Obama campaign’s desire to win the nomination, regardless of its illegitimacy, and their hostility towards poor white Americans is a movement which is tearing the Democratic Party apart. Many of us believe that the best way to fight for working Americans — regardless of color — is to make sure this movement is defeated.

PLEASE DONATE, RATE, COMMENT & mark FAVORITE

Brought to you by Shut The Freud Up Productions

:::::::::

Now, I used to be a Deaniac. What in the hell was I thinking? What a huge relief he didn’t get nominated. John Kerry was a piss poor candidate too with a nutjob wife. Dick Gephardt had the charisma of dry toast.

But NOW we do have a real candidate with REAL experience who KNOWS the score, knows how the games are played, knows how to fight, and NEVER GIVES UP.

And most of Obama’s supporters do NOT count as REAL supporters. Most of them are so young they’re still having temper tantrums unless mommy and daddy vote the way they want them to. And if the Democratic party think that those young uns are gonna stick around and do the hard work of running a party, they’re idiots.

Unless Donna and Howard decide no. And apparently they get to choose, and the millions of the rest of us can just go screw ourselves.

Hillary is telling her supporters that this race isn’t about the math, it’s about the map. She is well aware that she is much more likely to beat Mcain than Obama.

The endorsement of Obama by John Edwards dampened the hopes of many Hillary supporters. But Hillary is running hard and making some very interesting last-minute moves.

So, what is happening in Camp Hillary right now? Consider the picture prominently featured on Hillary’s Web site:

Hillary as Sun Queen — beautiful, strong, iconic — is a rather unusual move at the end of a campaign. She radiates power, empathy, and the vulnerability of John F. Kennedy and is strikingly similar to another woman of the people, Eva Peron:

Her conference call with bloggers on Friday was a move more normally associated with a campaign’s kick-off than the final few weeks. Also on Friday she began running an ad in Oregon which specifically targets Obama’s biggest supporters in the media:

What we’re seeing, I suspect, is another New Hampshire moment where there’s a disconnect between the media’s desire to quickly anoint Obama and the reality that this is a very tight campaign in which Hillary has a legitimate path to the nomination. I believe that Hillary remains in the race because she knows the state of the race better than the media or the neo-liberal bloggers. She knows what many super delegates are telling her in private; the fact that she will do very well in Kentucky and Puerto Rico; the potential for Obama to implode; and the imminent decision on how Michigan and Florida will be seated.

Although it’s a minority view, there are pundits out there who see a scenario where Hillary wins. Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics writes:

I will predict that West Virginia will be either her best or her second best finish, behind only Arkansas. Kentucky should come in right behind the two. This alone should be enough to induce some caution. I think it is too hasty to declare her finished just days before two of her three best states.

If, for a moment, we turn off the volume on Obama’s cheerleaders in the media and consider the results of Pennsylvania and West Virginia (41 point landslide!), it’s clear that Obama is the far weaker candidate to face McCain. The Clinton Team knows this to be true. They know Hillary will be ahead in the popular votes. And that without the DNC’s self-destructive but intentional games with Michigan and Florida, Hillary would have spent months with an “insurmountable” delegate lead and the nomination. Remember, Hillary was counted out before New Hampshire. Unless she says so, there is still a very real contest, and with Hillary we could win the White House this year.

As riverdaughter writes:

she’s not getting out of the race, not when she’s winning in the popular vote by more than 50,000 votes. There’s still Kentucky, Oregon, South Dakota, Montana and Puerto Rico and more voters to help her put some distance between herself and Obama. So, she’s in it to win it. And why shouldn’t she? She’s won more of the crucial states than he has.

Let’s assume Hillary wins tomorrow in Pennsylvania. Regardless of her margin of victory, superdelegates are still tasked with picking the Democratic nominee. A post by Jeralyn on TalkLeft argues convincingly that Obama would face almost insurmountable odds against McCain. Jeralyn uses William Arnone’s analysis of the electoral landscape. Jeralyn says:

First, we need to figure out which of the 20 states are vulnerable to McCain and decide whether Hillary or Obama has a better chance of carrying them. Mr. Arnone says those states are: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon and Wisconsin, which have a total of 68 electoral votes.

As I’ve written before, Kerry won Pennsylvania by only 2% in 2004. Obama’s inability to carry large states besides his home state does not bode well for his candidacy.

What is more troubling is that Kerry won Wisconsin by a mere .5%. Also, if Michigan is lost by selective disenfranchisement, then the Democratic Party should go into another line of business.

Jeralyn continues:

Next are the ten states the Dems didn’t win in 2004 that there’s a chance of winning in 2008. They are: Arkansas; Colorado; Florida; Iowa; Missouri; Nevada; New Mexico; North Carolina; Ohio; and Virginia. Of these, all but North Carolina have already voted. Mr. Arnone says: “The winner of the popular vote in the Democratic primary or caucus in each of these key states will have a higher likelihood of carrying that state in November. This is a critical consideration in determining who is likely to be the Party’s most successful Presidential candidate in the general election.”

Obama would be certain to lose Florida and it’s hard to imagine him winning any of the states above, regardless of how much the so-called “progressives” wish it. Jeralyn tracks Arnone’s argument that the Democratic candidate will have to pick up four crucial constituencies: women, Catholics, the elderly, and Latinos. Obama is very weak with all four groups while Hillary is remarkably strong with all four. While Obama would likely lose ALL swing states, Hillary would probably win Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio. In other words, a landslide.

The Obama campaign has argued that the superdelegates should pick the person with the most delegates at the end of the primary season, but of course that’s without counting Michigan and Florida. Selective disenfranchisement is the name of their game. But that’s precisely NOT the role of superdelegates. Their role is to exercise independent judgment and pick the strongest candidate, the candidate that will most likely win in the General Election.

There are rumblings that a group of young militants are recruiting African Americans and others to riot at the August convention if Obama is not selected as the nominee. This may be true as Obama’s surrogates have used strong-armed tactics to sway the caucuses and it is well known that many of his young followers see themselves as part of a radical movement. Some people feel that the superdelegates are afraid of these consequences if they don’t nominate Obama.

However the threat of rioting is a manipulation by Obama’s overzealous youth movement (they’ve been seen posting pictures of Che Guevara in Obama offices) and it has been intentionally overstated and exaggerated throughout the blogs. Moreover, the superdelegates are much more concerned about the Democrats winning the General Election than they are about the threats made by Obama’s young followers. And as much as Hillary’s supporters may cringe at the thought, Hillary will likely pick Obama as her running mate. She has stated so publicly and her former campaign manager, Patti Solis-Doyle, is running a campaign she calls voteboth.org, an operation, I believe, to assure the superdelegates that Hillary will select Obama and bring his troops into the fold. Think Kennedy-Johnson 1960: two warring factions of the Party must be united to win. Or as President Johnson said: It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

With only a hint of sarcasm, I accept Obama and Howard Dean’s word that Michigan and Florida will be seated. Therefore, Hillary is currently 9 delegates behind Obama today and will likely be ahead tomorrow. A stolen nomination is a lost election, and superdelegates cannot allow that to happen.

The superdelegates are at a crossroads: they could placate Obama’s wing of the Party (and the ObamaMedia) and accept certain defeat, or they can select Hillary and win a victory and usher in a historic era of activist government.

Thanks to Mary Jo Kopechne, PhD, for her assistance with this essay.

That’s what I thought when I read this Politico.com article. For awhile there, we almost thought that Dean and Pelosi would need a telephone pole on their heads to get it. Florida and Michigan voters are mucho ticked off. They wanted their delegates seated and that didn’t happen. So they asked for a revote, but a certain candidate who knew he couldn’t win these states, dispatched his lackies to make sure that didn’t happen. Then private individuals offered to actually pay for the revotes and a certain candidate still blocked the revotes in both these states.

It all seemed so hopeless, especially for the Democratic party in November. The whole thing seemed like a fix for Barack Obama and John McCain respectively, pure and simple.

So here we are reading today that the DNC will seat Florida and Michigan members on three standing committees that have impact on deciding who will actually be our nominee.

I started thinking, what changed? Have Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi come to their senses? Could it be that they understand that it’s not nice to tick off two states you need to win a general election no matter how important you think you are? Or could it be that Barack “Democracy only works if it works for me” Obama has figured out that in Florida and Michigan he is regarded as a pipe wrench in the engine of Democracy?— and that he has a better chance of seeing God than he has of carrying Florida and Michigan in a revote, much less a General Election? Did he not see this coming and how soon can we expect him to go into a fetal position again after he whines that what is fair is actually not fair because it doesn’t work for him?

Yes, it is great to read that Howard Dean is doing the right thing, isn’t it? It’s only a shock because seeing Howard Dean do the right thing has appeared to be a rarity lately. But there still is one small detail. Michigan and Florida representatives can’t really be placed on standing committees to decide who will be the nominee if their delegates aren’t seated. So, would anyone want to make a wager as to what should happen next?

Your answer and mine would likely be that Obama is cutting his losses and will offer a perfunctory well-staged indignant whine while the Florida and Michigan delegates would be seated. Right?

Well, it’s hard to tell. Bear with me, please.

When I was a kid I remember reading a short story, The Lady Or the Tiger. There was this lovely princess who was in love with a man her father did not want her to marry. So the king set up an arena with two doors. Behind one door was another beautiful lady the Beloved of the Princess would be forced marry if he selected that door. Behind the second door was a man-eating tiger. Then the king dispatched the man his daughter loved to the arena, told the Princess what was behind each door, and then ordered his daughter to pick a door for her Beloved to open. The story left us wondering which door did she send her beloved to?

Why am I boring you with this story, you ask. You are asking that right? Here’s why:

As I said, it’s great to be reading that Howard Dean is doing the right thing for “The Party”. However, here is another article from The Washington Times (yes, that newspaper) that tells us Dean wants all uncommitted superdelegates to make up their minds before the convention.

Mr. Dean’s stern admonition to both candidates to stop the attacks on one another, telling their supporters to “keep their mouths shut,” got lots of media attention. His plan to bring the nominating fight to an end, possibly before June, got little notice.

That plan calls on the remaining 350 or so undeclared superdelegates to break their neutrality sooner rather than later, providing enough votes to produce the 2,024-delegate majority needed to clinch the nomination. “There is no point in waiting,” Mr. Dean said, adding that he has been “talking to a fairly significant number of — by and large — nonaligned people about how we might resolve this.”

Can anybody say, Double-Plus-Good-Duckspeaker?

Which Dean is the real Dean?

Will the Real Dean please stand up and tell us exactly which door he is sending us to. The Lady or The Tiger?

Exactly which door is Dean picking for us in the name of the party that is named for Democracy?

Should I change the title of this piece to “Daddy FIx Me An Election, Please?”

Just asking.

Hyper Educated Uppity Woman

Florida’s votes don’t count.

Michigan’s votes don’t count.

But the votes of Howard Dean’s Car Dealer and a Lobbyist trump them all.

That’s right folks. As you know this race is close, so 25 delegates can mean a lot. Well, you can rest well tonight knowing that 25 appointed delegates, the names and affiliations unknown to us, are going to pick our Democratic candidate–all of them appointed by Howard Dean with Donna Brazile’s blessings. Now who do you suppose will be the beneficiary of those 25 obscure and magical votes, that are not acquired through ANY primary or caucus?

Process thrusts panel in spotlight

Mr. Dean’s criteria for choosing his 25 members was “to get a diverse group of people from all walks of life,” said a party official, who added that the “process of choosing these 25 began last fall, when many of the 25 appointed members were uncommitted.”

“I don’t think they explained that to us beforehand,” joked Dean Aguillen, a lobbyist who was appointed to the committee by Mr. Dean. “It’s something that came up later, and you started learning some of the processes of the convention.”

For once at least, someone in the press took the time to cover something important that is going on behind the scenes–or should we say behind our backs???

Fleaflicker here:

I mean seriously folks. Do any of you really think the person below is qualified to decide the nominee of our party?