Archive for April 30th, 2009
Something interesting for the conspiracy crowd out there
We have debated on even mentioning this conversation, because we know what the moonbats out there will do with it, but think it’s interesting enough to at least debate and consider.
We have a very good friend named Wess who was a big fundraiser for Democrats in the Pacific Northwest, but who, like us, now exclusively supports Hillary Democrats, and considers the DNC to be off-the-rails and not worthy of blind support anymore (he actually wants to move to San Francisco and personally organize a challenge to Pelosi, and then work the 15 blocks of her district nonstop and send that terrible Congresswoman packing in 2010; we want to do the same thing here in Chicago to Jan Schakowsky). Wess, like us, believes the economic policies of the current administration have us on a collision course with disaster that the public at large has no awareness of. Since he owns his own business, and deals a lot with contractors, subcontractors, and freelances, Wess repeatedly tells us that the unemployment rate of 8% the current administration uses is FAR TOO LOW, because it does NOT factor in the self-employed and freelance or contract workers. In big cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and others MANY people work as contractors or freelancers, and many are struggling. If these people were actually included in the unemployment figures, and if those figures actually accurately reported people who are underworking because of budget cuts, the unemployment rate could be as high as 25% in our big cities, which would be higher than the Great Depression.
The MSM won’t tell you any of this, because it continues to cheerlead for the current president. But the reality is there.
Wess feels reality will catch up with the MSM by 2012, if not by 2010. He firmly believes the current president will not seek re-election, though we don’t agree with him on that. We are still convinced the current president will consider himself a failure if he only gets one term — but Wess argues that he could easily use Parkinson’s or some other excuse to walk away, leaving chaos in his wake, and that would set the stage for Hillary Clinton to be the Democrats’ nominee in 2012.
Now, we can already imagine the moonbats gearing up to go to town with this. We’ve been running this site for well over a year now, and anticipate what most of you will say, and how some of you, in particular, will twist something like this post to make it whatever you want. This is totally Wess’ speculation, and we aren’t saying we are agreeing with it, but Wess presents something interesting enough that we’ve discussed it with other friends at lunch and dinner in recent days, and wanted to open it for discussion here as well. Because, while out in left field and hard to imagine in many ways, Wess makes a lot of interesting points.
For starters, Wess accurately describes the narcissistic nature of the current president who, if facing defeat against a strong Republican in 2012, will pull an LBJ and use either a real or manufactured health crisis like Parkinson’s (or something else) to forgoe a run for a second term. Wess believes there was a deal made in 2008, and that one-term was the deal. Wess also believes there are a lot of skeletons that were not released in 2008 that would be fair game in 2012. So the MSM’s constant references to this as the current president’s “first term” are laughable to Wess.
Now, here’s where the moonbats will surely take wing and go nuts as usual.
Wess believes Hillary Clinton will only serve one more year as Secretary of State, and will step down in 2010 to focus on “something else”. Wess believes Ann Lewis at NoLimits.org, HRC surrogates and friends like Lynn Forester, and Hillary Democrats at large truly are that army in winter quarters waiting for her to need a political operation again. And nobody is getting rusty, or taking any moment for granted. Wess says he feels, and gets this feeling from all the events he goes to, that something is happening behind the scenes and that HRC will run for president in 2012 — and that the current president will step aside due to health issues, leaving the mess for HRC to clean up.
Now, before you blast this in comments, we will be the first to say this is wishful thinking from someone who adores Hillary Clinton as much as we do. We told Wess this much, and cautioned him not to get sucked into the dream world we’d all love to see. But Wess says he’s had conversations with people who know what they are talking about, and that HRC wanted out of the Senate so she would not be tied to any of the nonsensical and damaging things this current administration and our current Democrat-controlled Congress is up to. Instead, Hillary Clinton gets to travel the world as Secretary of State, not only removing herself from any connection to the domestic mess, but also removing any foreign policy criticisms opponents can throw at her in years ahead. How can anyone argue Hillary Clinton is not strong on foreign policy credentials when she was the 67th United States Secretary of State? How can anyone argue she was responsible for the current administration’s economic failings, when she was halfway around the world?
What’s interesting is that this time as Secretary of State has increased HRC’s national approval rating to the 70s, and some think even the 80s, with most Americans. That is not only higher than previous Secretaries of State, but higher than the current president’s. She, for the first time on the national scene, also broke 50% approval rating amongst conservative Republicans. Part of that is because of how hard she fought in 2008 for the nomination, part of it is how great of a job she is doing as Secretary of State, and part of it is because even Republicans who irrationally hated this proud American for years realize she has the country’s best interests at heart, is a patriot, and would have been a much, much better president than the man behind the Resolute Desk currently.
Wess is convinced HRC will decide to leave Foggy Bottom in 2010. One theory has her running for New York Governor in 2010 if Paterson realizes his chances of winning are hopeless. That would position Clinton to also have executive experience by the time 2012 rolls around, the one thing she’s missing on her resume (though, to be honest, 2008 proved how little actual experience, executive or otherwise, matters to voters in a presidential race). Governor Clinton, former Secretary of State, former Senator, presidential candidate once again. Love the sound of that.
But, once again, we insert caution here before anyone goes off the deep end. This is all Wess’ speculation, though Wess is someone who definitely talks to people in the know on a regular, in fact daily, basis. It’s certainly not coming from his imagination.
Taking a page from the current president’s followers back in 2004, we think it would be a fantastic idea if all of you out there would join us in improving our political and organizational skills for 2012. We need to get the public at large to see that change is needed in Washington, and that it is time for a female president, time for the historic moment when a person representing 51% of the population can take the oath of office. We want that person to be Hillary Clinton…but just hear us out for a moment and realize that this is something that both Hillary and Sarah supporters can work on together. Heck, it’s something supporters of all women can work on together. Because from 2004 onward, the current president’s followers laid the foundation for his successful run. Who is doing that for the first female president? Why isn’t it you?
Here’s how we intend to proceed: we are investing in a political education for ourselves. The TV has been turned off, unplugged even, and nights are spent reading every political book we can get from the library. Weekends are spent volunteering, building our networks, and connecting with the people we will need to work with should Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton run for president in 2012. Just in case.
In case she needs that army of hers reawakened, we want to be ready. We will not let what happened to her in 2008 happen again.
And, if Wess is completely in left field and Clinton stays at State, and the current president runs again in 2012, we hope Sarah Palin runs for the Republican nomination becuase in that case we intend to use our organization to help her, just as we did in 2008 when we all became Democrats for McCain. So, all of our education, all of that time spent honing our skills, all of the research we are doing into how best to game the caucuses and primaries for OUR candidate the way the current president’s followers gamed them for him will not go to waste.
Who knows what will happen — maybe Palin will, unwisely, believe the MSM has destroyed her chances of winning the nomination in 2012. Maybe she will decide that it’s not worth the grief to run (and we would not blame her, just as we would never hold it against HRC if she didn’t want to run again and subject herself to all that grief).
But, a woman will be president — in either 2012 or 2016 if we have anything to say about it.
This is what we want, this is what we believe in, and a qualified, strong, determined, impressive woman is who we want to champion. This is our moment to stand up and fight for change, and bring hope to women everywhere in the world that they can do whatever they want…they can be president!
In short, we hope whoever runs in 2012 uses every last one of the current president’s tricks against him. Should Wess be far off and Clinton not be part of the race next time around, we want to see SOME WOMEN reaching for that brass ring. If not Palin, either, then SOMEONE, because we never again want to see a field of presidential candidates resemble another sausage fest.
And this part shouldn’t be news to anyone, but we also long ago decided that this is now part of what we do as people around here. If Clinton had won the nomination and had become president, we don’t know where we’d be. Maybe we’d be back to our old lives, just having a marvelous time here in Boystown, doing whatever stupid things we did before and being just more of those people hanging out at Ping Pong on a Thursday night, eating General’s Chicken or Kung Pao beef, talking about condos or new gadgets we’d like or what people were wearing at the last Glamorama benefit. But, what we witnessed in 2008, all that fraud, all that ACORN, all the misogyny and sexism and race-baiting and other vile tactics used by the current president and sanctioned by the DNC, well, it changed us for good.
It woke us up.
When we’re out to dinner, we hear the babbling of the tables next to us, so focused on material things, on status, and on fluff. People lost in their iTunes, reading People Magazine, adrift in their own little worlds. We won’t ever be like that again, we realize. We are engaged and active politically now, like never before, and we want to help make a difference in future elections, countering whatever tricks ACORN will pull next time around. So, we all end up talking about ideas for HillBuzz, and for how to reach more people and get them to start educating themselves, improving their own skills, and start getting themselves ready for 2012 (if not 2010 for some races).
If we really want to be ready to do for the first female president what ACORN, the MSM, the DNC, and George Soros did for the current president, then we need to use each and every day judiciously to forever keep working hard as we get closer and closer to the day when real change in Washington will come with a woman sitting behind the Resolute Desk.
That’s our hope.
That’s what we want to work on.
Wess thinks we’ll have another shot with our champ in 2012 and nothing would make us happier.
We shall see.
And we will work hard to raise our skill set so we’ll be prepared just in case Wess is right and that happens. But, like we said, should that not come to pass, our skill set will be there for other uses, and ultimately, if we keep working hard like this, we will win. A woman will be president.
We remain convinced her name will be either Hillary or Sarah. Maybe her name will be Kay or Samantha or Heloise. Who knows. But it’s not going to happen unless we use every day to our great advantage.
So, believe what Wess thinks or not, you have to admit that we’re right about the skill set part — the more we do to get ready for 2012, the better position we will be in no matter what happens. But, we should not be in a position where we find ourselves wishing we had done this or that.
As the current administration proves, wishing doesn’t accomplish anything. Blindly hoping for the best is not a strategy.
We need a strategy. So, maybe Wess’ take on all this will inspire some of you out there to come up with a solid one.
That’s why we shared this, with the caveat that it is, indeed, out there, but so is a lot of what happened in 2008 when you think about it.
HillBuzz Meets Michael Steele (and walks away more certain than ever that we should all be Americans first, partisans last)
Dear HillBuzz,
Ordinarily, a moderately-attractive man telling me I have to take off my pants isn’t something I’d necessarily find unpleasant, or even surprising in Boystown, but at the Chicago Union League Club, it was decidedly irksome.
“You must take off your pants,” he said, demanding my dark navy vintage Levis with one hand, while proferring two pairs of available “loner pants” with the other.
Loner pants? Trust me on this: they are not as cool as they sound, and certainly not the sort of loners that hang around behind the back of the school smoking Marlboros and looking all shades of cowboy/James Dean/aspiring felon mysterious. These particular loners, of the yard sale unwashed polyester heap variety, were fraternal twins birthed sometime in the 80s and immediately orphaned to the back of a coat check room waiting for someone unsuspecting like me: one was enormous, sized 42 at least, in what can only be described as bludgeoned elephant-seal gray, and the other was meek and khacki, sized 27 or so, a refugee from an errant twink’s Halloween boy scout costume.
I took one look at the giant elephant seal polyester trousers and, not being Bill Richardson, disgraced Governor of New Mexico and lifelong Arby’s mainstay, told the Assistant Front Office Manager of the Union League Club that, no, this particular loner (meaning me) could not wear something so big resourceful campers could easily repurpose it as a tent.
“Well, as you can see,” he said, with no hint of humor at all, but struggling for the politically correct words, “most of our members are…well…extremely well-fed.”
No, I thought, Oprah Winfrey is well-fed. Charybdis of ancient yore was well-fed. Planet-devouring giant Anime transformable robots from my childhood that were voiced by Orson Welles at the simultaneous nadir of his self-respect and zenith of his gluttony were well-fed.
If there is a succinct and appropriate word for what members of Chicago’s Union League Club are, it escapes me, but it is certainly not well-fed.
I was invited to attend RNC Chair Michael Steele’s meeting in Chicago, held in the ballrooms and banquet halls of the Union League Club, but was unfortunately not told I’d be practically tackled in the lobby by a surprisingly aggressive and speedy adolescent concierge, then accosted by the Assistant Front Office Manager with a camping tent and cub scout’s khackis, for wearing my standard operating uniform to a political function (that was designed to be all about inclusiveness and forward-thinking in the state of Illinois). Normally, a dark blazer, nice button-down shirt, dark vintage jeans, and kick-ass pair of brown leather boots I’ve had since high school serve me very well, and in fact more or less traveled with me through many states, and dozens of encounters with everyone from Hillary and Bill Clinton, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, Madeline Albright, Sarah Palin, John McCain, and so many on both sides of the aisle in between.
But the Union League Club wasn’t having any of that. And this isn’t a rant by me about their rule that a man can’t wear jeans to a meeting there (even though I personally saw many women in jeans who weren’t accosted or treated the way I was), it’s just an observation that Republicans need to wake up and stop holding meetings about openness and inclusion at places like the Union League Club. You have a rule against jeans — that’s fine. Prehistoric in my opinion, but fine. There are ways you can handle that, and there are ways that embarrass yourself and the person you are imposing your rules on. Instead of taking me to the side, discretely, the way I’d handle telling someone they have bad-breath or, in the state of Illinois at least, letting the Governor know he’s been indicted, the Union League Club made a very particulare and concerted effort to humiliate me in the lobby, in front of dozens and dozens of people waiting for elevators to head up to the Michael Steele event. ”You must take your pants off now!,” is not something these people were accustomed to hearing in the middle of a public space in the afternoon on a random Wednesday, and so they did what most people in the Midwest do with anything unusual: they stared.
They stared at me as I tried to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis, between deciding if I should try to squeeze into a cub scout’s size 27 khackis or drown in an elephant seal gray tarp, convenient only for the most “well-fed” of the Union League Club’s members (who, in my opinion, would require such a loner not for accidentally wearing jeans to a meeting, but because his own pants were presumably covered with barbeque sauce again).
They stared at me not because I was wearing jeans, but because the Union League Club decided to make such a scene out of it, pointing and scolding, demanding and degrading, creating a weird floor show right there out in the open to be stared at.
But, I had to smile through all of it, because as a lifelong Democrat who’s been coming to Republican events like this since June 8th, 2008 (the day after Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign for president, the day I decided to become a Democrat for McCain), I repeatedly encounter bizarre situations like this with Republicans that would never, ever in a million years happen at a Democrats’ event. NEVER.
Because Republicans talk about openness and inclusion and wanting to reach out to new people, but then they have their meetings at the Union League Club, where people who’ve gone out of their way to help them are humiliated in public en route to yet another event where they will try to inexplicably help them some more. No Republican I’ve told this story to has been able to grasp how absolutely pitch-perfect this anecdote is in describing the trouble the GOP is in right now (even the Chicago Young Republicans said to me, “You shouldn’t have worn jeans to the Union League Club”, to which I replied, “Well, I’ve worn jeans to the White House and no one there told me to take my pants off.”). They can’t, or won’t, listen closely enough to the story to see that what bothers me is not the arcane rule the Club has, but the way they went about enforcing the rule, and the needless scene they made embarassing me in front of all of those people.
It’s not the rule or stance on something Republicans have working against them, it’s the way they go about enforcing those rules and stances. The way the Union Club had to beat me into the ground over those jeans; the way it comically put forward two clearly unacceptable solutions to the problem at hand in the form of those pants that could never, ever fit me; the way there was absolutely no understanding shown, or empathy given, for me and the situation I was in. These are all, anecdotally, part of the Republican Party’s disconnect with many of us in the center, and things I fully intended to speak to Michael Steel about — as soon as I dashed outside and bought a new pair of non-jeans that would actually fit so I could get into the meeting.
The pants-drama cost me half an hour total, so I missed one reception but made it to a large meeting Steele addressed, made up of about 400 people from various constituent groups. HillBuzz was there in almost solid force, with three of us attending the meeting. I didn’t know what to think of Steele at first. When he was made Chair of the RNC, I debated writing an article about what a mistake this was, because it seemed like Republicans were just pulling the old Deep Impact/Armageddon, A Bug’s Life/Antz, Diff’rent Strokes/Webster, packaging trick, answering the de facto head of the Democratic Party in the White House with a black man as the head of the GOP, for no reason other than the fact that he is black. But, what kept me from saying anything about Steele until I could meet him for myself was the fact that so many people I knew from the McCain campaign are huge fans of Steele’s.
In fact, the very first Republican I ever had a civil conversation with (Julie, who I contacted the day after Hillary suspended to let her know that most of the people I knew could not support the Democrats after what they did to Clinton in the primaries) was the first person on board Steele’s candidacy, when he was running for RNC Chair and swung through Chicago on one of his trips to secure votes. Julie rode with Steele to the airport and was so impressed with him that later she told me she felt she was in the care with the next Vice President, and a future President himself some day. I still didn’t know what to think of Steele, though. The way he peppers his speech with “baby”, the way he says outrageous and sometimes ridiculous things, the way he’s just so…snarky.
In a lot of ways, it’s like putting one of us around here in the RNC Chair, and that would be as comfortable a fit as swimming in those nasty Union League Club loner pants. Steele’s just such an unorthodox and unusual pick for the GOP, and it has nothing to do with his race. He just is so different than all those that have come before him — and after meeting the man, I have to tell you that this is a very, very good thing, because Steele certainly wouldn’t have held his meetings at a place like the Union League Club if he’d personally had the choice. Because inclusion and openness aren’t just words to him. Outreach isn’t an empty concept. In fact, “outreach” as a word is so cliche to Steele that one of the first things he said at his meeting was that he wants “outreach” banned frome everyone’s vocabulary.
“Outreach,” Steele asserted, “is something clowns say when they want to appear they aren’t a bunch of stuffy and clueless dinosaurs, so they say, ‘Lookit our outreach. Lookit all the different people we have. We have a Hispanic. Oooh! Here’s a woman! A WOMAN! Here’s a Jew! Lookit! We even have a gay person! Lookit all our outreach we did.’ There are five sad, lonely people in a room who feel like they don’t belong and are just there as window dressing, like adding some new giraffes or leopards to a zoo full of various kinds of elephants.”
“Outreach is banned from this day forward. There will be no cockamamie “outreach” like this as afterthought or half-hearted attempt to just claim to be inclusive. No, we need to be the real deal. We need to grow our numbers one by one by talking to people, getting to know them, and showing them how much we really do have in common when we get passed all the nonsense.”
As a PUMA suddenly finding myself in that elephant’s zoo during the 2008 campaign, I related to absolutely everything Steele said, and the man truly did impress me. His general theme, articulated the way only he can, is that Republicans “need to get off their tushies and start addressing the corruption, graft, mismanagement, and extraordinary waste of Democrats in this state of Illinois, across the country, and in Washington”. And he got the room fired up talking about how much could be done, but only if people put their hearts into it, noting that Republicans tend to be a complacent bunch who have never understood that Democrats run perpetual, neverending campaigns while Republicans just give up the day after an election.
Which is so very, very true. Democrats are already geared up not just for 2010, but for 2012 and beyond. With the MSM’s complicity, Democrats are already undermining Governor Palin in Alaska and Governor Sanford in South Carolina, because they both would be strong candidates for 2012, and the MSM wants to guarantee the current president gets a second term (as they already consistently refer to this Golden Age we live in as “the first 101 days of his first term”). On that same note, the MSM consistently pushes fatally-flawed national candidates like Bobby Jindal (fundamentalism, exorcism) and Charlie Crist (shenannigans, Green Iguana) for the GOP’s 2012 nomination and, I’m sure, will do everything they can in Iowa come January 2012 to make sure either Crist or Jindal becomes the GOP’s nominee instead of someone who will defeat the incumbent president.
Steele, in his remarks, addressed all of this, saying Republicans let Democrats and the media control the agenda, and that Republicans still don’t know who they want to run for many races in 2010. Using Chicago as an example, I repeatedly tell people how absolutely asinine that is. In the special election to fill Rahm Emanuel’s Congressional seat back in March, I backed Mike Quigley because he is a good and decent man who would do a good job. Sara Feigenholtz was the current president’s choice for the seat, and was whom Rahm Emanuel wanted to take his place. I don’t know what I would have done if Feigenholtz had been the nominee — because I just don’t like her, and I would have liked to have voted for a Republican alternative instead of her, but the Republicans ran a crazy person (Rosana Pulido) instead of a sensible person who could do a good job.
How many times do Republicans put up crazy people in races they think they can never win, so they don’t even bother to try?
Pulido, all through the 2008 campaign, made wild and crazy statements about immigration for no other reason than to advance her own celebrity. She repeatedly called the GOP nominee “Juan McCain” and would go on television ostensibly to speak as a surrogate, but would instead malign McCain and the Republican Party. Why on Earth was she the nominee in the 5th Congressional special election? Because, as Steele noted, Republicans don’t have a farm team grooming candidates for expected races in years ahead. Steele explained that Democrats already know who’s going to run in what elections going all the way up to 2016 and possibly beyond. He looked around the room and said, “Okay, you here, you are going to run in the Senate race in 2010, and so we have been giving you various choice speaking spots to get your name out there. And you here, we like you, but it’s not your time yet. We can groom you for 2014′s Congressional race. You over there, we want you for President in 2020, so we’re going to start talking you up on all of our media channels as a ‘rising star’, so we’re also going to start making sure you keep your nose clean for the next 12 years.”
Republicans don’t put that kind of investment in candidates, but they should.
Maybe if they did, terrible people like Claire McCaskill, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Bob Casey, and Bill Richardson would not hold elected office.
Since 2004, and Kerry’s loss to Bush, the Democrats planned to “Obamafy” the DNC (in Donna Brazile’s own words), and that’s how the current president got to where he is. The Democratic establishment pushed him since the Boston nominating Convention for Kerry, and look how well that plan worked out for them. Republicans, according to Steele, typically wouldn’t start thinking about November 2012 until January of that year. Democrats started thinking about November 2012 on November 5th, 2008. Steele said Republicans take part in an election, have a Results Party, and then sit on their thumbs for four years. Democrats just transition that campaign organization into the next candidate’s army. And they never stop honing and improving their skills, while Republicans always live in the past and are always playing catchup.
I just couldn’t stop thinking about that whole bruhaha with the pants the whole time Steele was talking.
First of all, that would never have happened at a Hillary Clinton event, because we always had volunteers EVERYWHERE for those events to make sure everyone was treated well, because everything reflected on the candidate, from the moment people walked in the door. It’s basic hospitality, even if the people doing the pants shakedown aren’t with the candidate, they represent the candidate that day because the candidate chose to have the event at that venue. So, at a Hillary event, there would have been people in the lobby who would have come up to the Union League Club and asked them to handle this matter more professionally, more quietly, and with more tact and discretion. Republicans don’t think about things like that, it seems, and take their insulated and expensive world they live in, at places like the Union League Club, to be a safe bubble where they don’t have to be on top of all details and be aware of how many things can go wrong. And that’s why they get taken by surprise so many times, I think.
As a Democrat who’s gone to political events since I was a kid, and my grandparents took me to meet everyone from the Carters to Jackie Kennedy to my first encounters with the Clintons in Arkansas in the 1980s, I can’t remember a single Democratic event where everyone wasn’t made to feel welcome. Democrats are on top of things like this, while Republicans take the attitude of, “Well, it’s your own fault for wearing jeans, so it doesn’t matter how the Union League Club handled it, you were wrong to wear jeans so I do not care how they treated you.”
There is a clean cultural difference between Democrats and Republicans that has really become clear to me in the last year. It’s not even a policy difference, it’s much, much deeper than that, and it’s still hard to articulate, but it manifests itself in episodes like the loner pants and the tone-deafness to the way the Union League Club handled it. I think it boils down to the fact that Democrats at large believe they can’t afford to lose a single vote or alienate a single person, while Republicans at large don’t seem to believe that one or two people here or there, no matter how maligned or slighted they feel, ever really matter. ”It’s just one person, mad about pants. Shouldn’t have worn jeans!”. But, those one or two people add up, even if they are people like me who took a whole day off, with lots of other stuff that needed to be done, because I was asked to be part of this listening tour for Steele (but I almost wasn’t able to attend, because of the Union League Club’s exclusionary rules).
I’m glad I ran down the streets of Chicago and found an Urban Outfitters to buy a new pair of slacks though, because talking to Steele was really worth it and has given me a lot to think about. After the big meeting with the hundreds of people, Steele held more small group meetings that I was able to attend, where I got to ask a few questions HillBuzz readers forwarded to us on this site. The first thing I asked about was ACORN, and specifically what the Republican Party is going to do to destroy it, because I personally believe ACORN should be considered a domestic terrorist organization and a threat to our democracy.
And ACORN is one of those things I always have to bring up when people I’ve known for years say to me, “You’re a Democrat, you shouldn’t be meeting with Michael Steele. You shouldn’t be friends with those Chicago Young Republicans. You shouldn’t be speaking out against Pelosi and Reid and the current administration. You should just keep quiet because ACORN helps Democrats win elections and you shouldn’t care if what it does is illegal”.
Well, I do care that ACORN commits voter fraud, because I watched ACORN do this from January 2008 through the November Election. I watched ACORN work for the current president when he was running against Hillary Clinton in the primaries, and I saw just how effective ACORN can be in swinging an election towards its desired outcome. There are terrorist organizations around the world who dream of having that kind of an impact on America — and here we have a domestic organization that leeches tax dollars off the government it is seeking to destroy through fraud, voter intimidation, and myriad other ACORN schemes.
It is outrageous the Democratic Party not only condones ACORN’s actions, but embraces, enables, facilitates, encourages, and lovingly approves of them. ACORN is, essentially, the current administration’s goon squad (the Hanson Brothers to the current president’s Reggie Dunlop, and not the adorable blonde Mmmmmbopping Hansons, but the crazed, vile, high-sticking Slap Shot Hanson variety).
It’s also outrageous that people constantly tell me I need to shut up and be a good Democrat and pretend everything is rainbows and sunshine with this administration, when nothing could be further from the truth. I went to see Steele because I wanted him to know that moderate Democrats like me believe the federal government should wake up and realize ACORN is a democracy-ending barbarian at our national gates, and that I believe Pelosi, Reid, and the current president are fiddling in togas drinking Kool-Aid from golden cups as everything around them burns.
I went to see Steele because I wanted to tell him that moderate Democrats like me campaigned against the current president because we believed, all along, that if he was elected he would use deficit-spending to funnel as much national treasure as possible into ACORN and other radical, destructive groups, and that this subsequent enormous increase in deficit would then cause rampaging, economy-killing inflation in 4-5 years.
I went to see Steele because I wanted to tell him that the Republican Party needs to stand up for women and the LGBTQ community, because the Democrats in 2008 proved they SURE AS HELL AREN’T GOING TO DO THAT.
I told Steele that the way I feel about the Democratic Party after its behavior in 2008 is the way I feel about a cousin of mine who is a court-ordered, home-confined drug addict. I love my cousin Todd. He’s a year older, so I’ve always been his cousin for as long as I’ve been alive. He will always be my family, because we grew up together, and being Todd’s cousin in part of my identity, culturally, spiritually, emotionally, whatever. But, I cannot sit here and say Todd is fine, that what Todd has done with his life is okay, or that I support the reckless things Todd believes are examples of good decision-making.
Todd thinks it’s a good idea to borrow money he doesn’t have, and can’t pay back, to waste on things that will do no one any good, aside from lining the pockets of criminals. Todd thinks it’s funny to trash women and talk smack about gays, even in my presence, with the occasional apology for speaking his mind on the rare occasions when he realizes how offensive he is (coincidentally, those occasions always coincide with Todd wanting something from me, and after he gets that something, he also coincidentally goes back to not giving a damn what I think anymore). Todd drowns out all criticism of him by lashing out with emotional attacks, and instead of addressing the substantive issues I take with him and his behavior, he just name-calls, tells me I am a traitor for not taking his side, and turns the conversation from what he’s doing wrong that’s harmful into an indictment against me for being a nonsupportive family member.
Does any of this sound familiar in relation to the Democratic Party in 2008 and the current administration?
Because it should.
As a Democrat, I feel a responsibility to call my party out when it is wrong — and it has been wrong an awful lot in the last two years, on issues ranging from wasteful spending to its treatment of women, to its support for ACORN and its refusal to hold people accountable for the fraud committed in 2008. I do this the same way I call Todd out for his destructive nonsense. For some reason people on the Left, especially, insist we all need to be blind, deaf, mute puppets who can’t think for ourselves and who have to just follow along happily behind them as they march this country right off a cliff. No matter how many times you say Hope!, Change!, Lemonade! or Pixie Dust!, you aren’t going to solve this country’s economic problems by throwing trillions of dollars into the toilet, or putting billions into the direct control of ACORN. And none of us are going to see America back on track by not thinking for ourselves and doing whatever Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tim Kaine, or the current president tell us to do.
When these people are right about something, we will agree with them and support them on it. We don’t see that happening any time soon, based on their record these last 100 days. As someone who wished and hoped Todd would just magically get better all of these years, I am hear to tell you that tough love means having the courage to stand up and tell your own family members exactly what you think of them and what they are doing to ruin their lives.
Sometimes it also means telling other people how bad things are and what they need to do to help solve the problems too, which is how I saw my time with Michael Steele.
I’m encouraged he realizes what a threat ACORN is to our democracy, and how he plans on going after them in the courts, something Democrats will NEVER do, and Republicans didn’t have sense or guts enough to try before. The more moderates and centrists learn about ACORN, the more repulsed they will be, and the more they’ll all want to see our electoral system head to rehab to detox ACORN out of our national system — they way even Todd’s doting and enabling parents ultimately realized how far gone their once good little boy was with his drug abuse.
I think it’s amazing Republicans continue to invite me and other HillBuzz Democrats to their events, where we always learn so much, and where we hope we give voice to the centrist perspective whenever possible. We told Steele Republicans should never try to be anything but Republicans, and that they need to be a distinct brand that’s different from the current incarnation of the Democratic party — which we believe are not TRUE Democrats. ACORN alone is evidence of that. ACORN is not what the Democratic Party should be about, but ACORN essentially is the Democratic Party right now. ACORN is not the Clintons. ACORN is not Hillary Democrats. ACORN is not moderate, centrist, rational Americans. Republicans, if they are smart, will make ACORN their focus the next four years, and do everything in their power to shut those domestic terrorists down.
Anyone who calls themselves a Democrat and doesn’t speak out against ACORN is either deluded or incredibly misinformed about what’s going on right now. Anyone who is a Democrat and doesn’t speak out against ACORN, but wants to, just because they feel it’s not appropriate to do so is as bad as all my relatives who saw Todd increasingly descend into more and more trouble, but didn’t think it was appropriate to call him out on it.
After McCain/Palin 2008, I now have all of these Republican friends who insist they will “turn me to the dark side” one day and that I will become a Republican. That is not going to happen. But, I will tell you what is going to happen. I am going to continue to work with Republicans to take out bad Democrats in Congress, including, I hope efforts under way to take down Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, Jan Schakowsky in Chicago, and Harry Reid in Nevada in 2010 (we have to wait until 2012 for Claire McCaskill). I hope to work with Republicans to eliminate ACORN and hope Republicans like Steele find a way to use the racketeering laws that brought down the mob in many places to take down the organized criminals that seem to be some of the current Administration’s best friends.
I want to see a woman president in 2012. I want that woman to be Hillary Clinton in a scenario where the current president uses whatever excuse he wants not to seek a second term (health problems, wants to spend more time with his family, whatever), but if that doesn’t happen, then I want to see some change I can really believe in, and our 45th president be sworn in representing the 51% of the population that too often gets the shaft. If not Hillary, then Sarah. And then Hillary can send Sarah packing in 2016, in what would truly be the election of a lifetime.
As we say here on HillBuzz a lot, go ahead and be all crazy about this if you want to. But, why do you come here if all you do is post nasty responses to things we say? These are our opinions, as Democrats who went through absolute Hell and back over the last two years — Democrats who saw our party usurped and coopted by the criminals and terrorists of ACORN — Democrats who are mad as Hell about the waste that’s coming out of this Congress and White House because we realize what disasters will soon befall us all as a result. What are you doing to eliminate ACORN? What are you doing to kick terrible people, of both parties, out of Congress? What are you doing to call out people who need to be called out?
I did it to my cousin Todd, because I knew Todd was wrong and he needed to be called out.
I call the Democrats out because they have A LOT to answer for from 2008.
I suffered embarassment and humiliation at the Union League Club in Chicago because I thought it was important enough to speak to Michael Steele and convince him to go after ACORN that I let myself be belittled and degraded like that, in public, by the staff of an out-of-touch exclusionary bastian.
I believe in this stuf so much that I actually considered wearing loner pants to get my point across.
What are you willing to do to get this country back on track? Because whoever you are, and whatever party you are in, if you are America-first, party-last, then you are a-okay in my book.
Sebastian Gray
Chicago, IL
Thursday Open Thread
It’s been a very busy few days around here — and there a lot of things we’ve been working on that are interesting, but life is getting in the way at the moment. Today we’re doing a thank-you events for our troops through the USO, which we are very excited about, and which we’ll report on later. A very busy, but good, week indeed.
We are still so surprised that we keep receiving hundreds of nasty remarks in comments each day because we said Dick Cheney was a Vice President who worked to keep this country safe, while Joe Biden isn’t, and that Biden in fact makes things worse more often than not.
How is that not true?
Biden’s now out causing panic with this swine flu nonsense — telling people he “would stay away from planes and trains”.
Is this a deliberate attempt by the White House to stoke more fear into people to further harm the economy? We doubt that, as this particular White House is not that organized or competent. It’s just more of Biden being Biden, with reality and common sense never getting in his way.
Like we said on Monday, say what you want about Dick Cheney, but the man never did things like this. Whenever Cheney said anything odd that made headlines there was a well-coreographed reason behind it, and it was a small part in some larger master plan he concocted in a secure undisclosed location somewhere. Joe Biden, on the other hand, just says the first thing to come into his head at that particular moment in time, not realizing that telling people to stay away from planes and trains, just days after the White House terrorized New Yorkers with a 9/11 re-enactment for a low-flying jetliner photo op, is probably an incredibly irresponsible and terrible idea.
Or maybe Biden really does know what he is doing, and he’s just a genius operating on a level so far above the rest of us his brilliance can only come off as madness.
What do you think? What else is on your mind today?
