Sunday December 16, 2007, 6:31 am
Yes, it is coming. The election of all elections I think. Who am I to vote for? Who will REALLY help bring back the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? I have been "lied" to by both the Democrats and the Republicans for so many years now. Why should I expect this election to be different? Even if we get the "right" person elected for President, they will still have to deal with Congress so, if they do not have at least 51% of the people in Congess behind them, they will not be able to accomplish anything. I WANT TO VOTE for the right people! Who are they? Please tell me and tell me why. I am registered so I am "tied" to one party so during the Primaries, I cannot even help get the right person in there if they do not happen to belong to "my" party. I no longer trust the Democrats or the Republicans but I know in my heart that the new President will more than likely come from one of these. Why can I not register has an American and be allowed to vote in ALL the primaries? Is this not my right has an American? One who was willing to die for our country at one time? I would like to be able to pick the "best" out of EACH party to run against each other and then come election day, chose the one I think would be right. I also think we need to "clean out the house" so that REAL CHANGE can be accomplished. I think a limit of 2 or 3 terms in office should be a law. I do not think that the President should be able to appoint Federal or Supreme Court Judges. These Judges are supposed to UPHOLD the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, not be "hand picked" by a President whom they will have to support since they were chosen by this President. I also think these Judges should be elected so that IF they one day in the future they chose NOT to uphold the Constitution or Bill of Rights, we can kick them out! So I ask you again, who should I vote for????

Sunday December 16, 2007, 6:53 am
I forgot to add, I would like to see a President that is wanting to get the "oil needle" out of our arm. This addiction is "killing the planet", our solders, and I think in time, our Country and our "mother". However, IF we kill the planet, it will not matter any way. I will apologize to my children, your children, their children etc and my and your Supreme Being....

Sunday December 16, 2007, 7:13 am
40% to 50% (78 million) of 200 million eligible voters don't even bother to vote. Those voters are complacent, apathetic, or resigned to the futility of voting and do not feel that voting is worthwhile. But by not voting, they are empowering those that will take advantage of their apathy. And many that do vote are misguided and seduced into petty partisan warfare. Education is badly needed.

Sunday December 16, 2007, 11:46 pm
Great article. Children should be taught in school about the iimportance of voting from a young age on up. This responsibility should fall to the parents, but it's likely they don't vote! It's not a democracy when half the population doesn't vote and of the one's who do, more of them are likely to be more effluent. Well heeled citizens are better represented than middle/lower class citizens. The electoral college is another bad idea. Thanks, Michael, noted.

Monday December 17, 2007, 12:06 am
Oh yes, thank you Sandra, the The electoral college should also be eliminated! And I agree, I think we will have to teach our children so that they do not see the days we have lately...

Monday December 17, 2007, 2:09 pm
Noted. This is an excellent article and if one is not already considering this issue...well, it is time to start thinking. The Electoral College has needed to be abolished for years and years! Thank you for submitting the story.

Tuesday December 18, 2007, 12:01 am
Belgium has an interesting law, one that should be considered for the good ole USA: MANDATORY ELECTIONS. In other words, ALL citizens would be required to vote.

Tuesday December 18, 2007, 4:23 am
Noted
I gotta get off of here now Michael but I will be back to finish reading this article
Thank you

Tuesday December 18, 2007, 4:52 am
The owners of our ONCE FREE PRESS will make you THINK that YOU chose your ruler.

Tuesday December 18, 2007, 5:51 pm
I wish people would educate themselves to the issues and the candidates.
Do you know the democrats have pushed Dennis Kucinich out of the Iowa Debates.
Could it be he is the only one with answers and solutions? Yes, Could it be that his voting record speaks for him? Yes, he was the only one to oppose the Iraqi invasion, the only one with the guts to stand against the bush regime. Could it be because HE IS THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO HAS REFUSED ANY AND ALL CORPORATE DOLLARS? YES. He doesn't have the expensive fancy offices that the others have? Of course not people, Dennis is a people's President and it's the working peons who are supporting him. Please go see what the man has to say and YOU decide who you'd rather have sitting in the White House. Somebody representing you, or big corporations?
http://www.dennis4president.com/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/14/746/76435/100/421957

by Archangel M
Fri Dec 14, 2007 at 04:29:36 AM PST
If you caught yesterday's debate in Iowa, you may have noticed the absence of Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich. This was an intentional exclusion on the part of the Des Moines Register newspaper, which not only made up its own rules about which candidates should be invited and which excluded but lied to voters about why this was. But don't just take my word for it; you can get the whole story from the Kucinich campaign's blog announcement by Jean Hay Bright on MySpace. (Or just read the Kos diary by Jean here, which I just found.)



http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/dennis-kucinich-and-thursdays-iowa-debate-by-jean-hay-bright/
Dennis Kucinich and Thursday’s Iowa Debate By Jean Hay Bright
Posted on December 14, 2007 by dandelionsalad
Dandelion Salad

By Jean Hay Bright
jeanhaybright’s diary
Daily Kos
Wed Dec 12, 2007 at 08:15:52 AM PST

I want to let you know what’s going on in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register put out a press release last week announcing that six of the eight Democratic candidates for President had “accepted invitations” to debate this Thursday. Congressman and Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich was not among them.

What the Des Moines Register press release should have said is that they offered invitations to this debate to only six of the eight nationally recognized Democratic presidential candidates and that all six who were invited accepted.

The Des Moines Register is a prominent newspaper. Their editors and writers know how to turn a phrase. And the way they turned that phrase in that news article, the implication is that Dennis Kucinich did not accept the invitation they offered to him. That phrasing by the Des Moines Register implied that Kucinich declined their invitation to debate.

That is not true.

In phrasing its news article the way it did, the Des Moines Register did not tell voters in Iowa — and voters across the nation, since this debate will be nationally televised — the whole truth.

Here’s the truth. Here is the arbitrary list of criteria for inclusion in this debate, and in other debates held in Iowa this fall:

Eligible Participants for Des Moines Register Debates will include Presidential Candidates who:

1. Have filed an FEC Form F-2, “Statement of Candidacy,” with the Federal Election Commission; (CHECK)

2. Have publicly announced an intention to run for the nomination of the Republican or the Democratic Party for President of the United States; (CHECK)

3. Have employed at least one paid campaign staff representative to perform full-time campaign duties in the State of Iowa on behalf of the candidate since at least October 1, 2007. (CHECK – Kucinich has had a full-time staffer – an Iowa resident – on board since April)

4. With at least 1% in the Des Moines Register October, 2007, Iowa Poll (CHECK)

5. And lastly, have a Campaign Office inside the State of Iowa as of October 1, 2007 (to which the Kucinich campaign says CHECK, but the Des Moines Register says CHECK-OUT)

The whole truth, the truth the Des Moines Register is not telling you, is that Dennis Kucinich has a political organization in Iowa. It is small, but it is energetic and energized. His paid state coordinator, Marcos Rubenstein, works out of his home. Dennis and his wife Elizabeth have campaigned in Iowa many times.

The Federal Elections Commission recognizes that the Kucinich campaign has paid staff in Iowa. The IRS recognizes the legitimacy of a home office. Across the country, the Kucinich campaign has at least 15 high-ranking paid campaign staff members who work out of their homes. Their offices are campaign offices.

The Des Moines Register, however, does not recognize a home office as a campaign office.

This is what they sent to the Kucinich campaign when it protested his exclusion from Thursday’s (Dec. 13) debate:

“It was our determination that a person working out of his home did not meet our criteria for a campaign office and full-time paid staff in Iowa.”

So is a full-time person on salary and working well more than 40 hours a week not a full-time person because he doesn’t waste time and energy lugging his cell phone and laptop from one address to another twice a day?

Yes, the Des Moines Register has determined, arbitrarily, that a campaign must have real estate in Iowa, a storefront, to be a legitimate campaign.

Two things wrong with that. The concept that only landed gentry should be eligible to participate in the political process is an idea that we threw out, not in the last century, but in the century before that.

And if a storefront is necessary before you can do business in Iowa, then Amazon.com is ineligible to do business in Iowa. Ebay is ineligible to do business in Iowa.

You see what I mean?

The Kucinich campaign is a very internet-connected effort, which does not spend money needlessly. It is, in fact, running the kind of energy-efficient campaign most of the American public wants.

The criteria used to keep the Kucinich message from Iowa voters, and from the American people, is arbitrary, capricious, and downright silly. But also dangerous. We cannot as a nation have corporations such as the Des Moines Register determining our political dynamic.

Why would the Des Moines Register do that?

For the same reason that the AARP excluded Kucinich from its Presidential Health Care forum earlier this fall here in Iowa. The AARP did not want people to hear his message of national, not-for-profit health care, already embodied in a bill before Congress (HR 676). Why? Because AARP sells health insurance. The Conyers/Kucinich plan to guarantee health care to everyone in America excludes private health insurance, because that is the only way a national health care plan can work financially. And that makes that plan a direct threat to that part of AARP’s business.

I might add that AARP’s willingness to hear about the health care plans of the other presidential candidates tells you that none of those health care plans would be a threat to AARP. Okay?

And clearly the Des Moines Register newspaper likewise does not want people to hear Dennis’ other messages –

– on how he is the only Democratic presidential candidate to vote against the Iraq War and against every funding bill for that war;

– that he has introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney (now in committee for review) and that he is drawing up similar ones against President Bush;

– that he has promised that ALL of our troops will be out of Iraq within three months of his becoming President, but also that the United States will be withdrawn from NAFTA and the WTO by the summer of 2009, to name a few.

For some reason the Des Moines Register does not want Iowa voters or voters across America to hear that message.

But that message is getting out.

Kucinich polled second in a California straw poll earlier this fall, behind John Edwards. Edwards received 29% of the total votes cast, Kucinich received just under 24%, and Obama and Clinton came in third and fourth, with 22.5% and 16.8% respectively. The other Democratic candidates were all in the low single digits.

Kucinich polled first in both the ABC and MSNBC “who won the debate” polls a few months ago, to the extreme embarrassment of ABC, who put up a second poll, which he also won, which forced them to drop the internet links to those results. Now, that link is still up, but it opens to a blank white page, the color of whitewash.

Dennis Kucinich is first in the online vote taken by The Nation Magazine a few weeks ago, with 35%, nine points above Barack Obama, and 22% points above John Edwards. (Edwards polled 13% to Hillary Clinton’s 5%.)

In last month’s Democracy for America poll, Kucinich received almost 32% of the 150,000-plus votes cast, more than Edwards and Obama combined. He polled first in 47 states, including both Iowa and New Hampshire.

He polled first in the Progressive Democrats of America online poll of its membership last week, with 41%. Broken down by states, in that poll he came in first in 46 states, including both Iowa and New Hampshire. Edwards was second with 26%, topping out in four states, beating Kucinich by one vote in Utah and two votes and the District of Columbia.

And when people go to various sites, non-partisan internet issue sites — several of them are out there – internetstrawpoll.com/, dehp.net/candidate/, Minnesota Public Radio –
where you can list your issues and find out which candidate most closely matches your own ideas and ideals, Dennis Kucinich has consistently come out as the leading candidate, as the candidate whose views are most closely aligned with the vast majority of Americans. Not second, third, fourth, or fifth. First.

So why do you only hear that Dennis Kucinich is polling in the single digits in national or statewide polls? I don’t know. You tell me.

I do know the mainstream media does not report it when Kucinich wins these other polls. They want to foster the idea that he is “unelectable” because they don’t want him and his “radical” ideas to be front and center in the White House:
– like protecting Social Security
– like establishing a Department of Peace,
– like his Works Green Administration plan for energy independence, a revitalized manufacturing base and a sound infrastructure,
– like national health care,
– like competency and accountability,
– like protecting the Constitution,
– like rejecting war as an instrument of foreign policy.

One traditional poll last week said that 55 percent of Iowa voters are undecided in this race. Fifty-five percent undecided less than a month before the Iowa caucuses. Perhaps it’s that way because the media has yet to focus on the issues of this campaign.

I would love it if Dennis Kucinich suddenly decided to go to Iowa tomorrow (Thursday) and show up at the debate site. I want him to accept their implied invitation, since he did not have an actual invitation to accept. I’d love to see what the Des Moines Register would do about that.

And here’s what I want you, the voters in Iowa, and across the nation, to do.

I want you to protest the exclusion of Dennis Kucinich from this debate. Write letters to the Des Moines Register. Email them. Give them a call. Give them a piece of your mind. Also contact Iowa Public Television, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, C-SPAN 3, who are all televising this debate.

And, even more importantly than this one debate, I want you, Iowa voters, to stand for Dennis Kucinich in your caucuses on Jan. 3. I want you to send the nation a message that you will not tolerate this manipulation of our political system.

The caucus system is fascinating and complicated. It’s what my sixth grade math teacher called a “story problem.” You caucus-goers know what I mean.

So, in those caucus rooms, I want you to stand for Dennis Kucinich. But, if the numbers in that particular room are such that he falls short of a delegate, or a second delegate, stand for “uncommitted.”

I’m asking you to vote Kucinich or to vote uncommitted. Work to get as many of either as you can.

You see, if, on the second round, you vote for another candidate instead of uncommitted, the impact of the support for Dennis Kucinich disappears.

The way the caucus system in Iowa works, those people you elect to be uncommitted delegates will get another chance to vote, at the Iowa county caucuses on March 15, after much of the dust has settled in this race.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the uncommitted Iowa delegates elected at the Jan. 3 caucuses mirrors the “undecided” in that poll I mentioned, and turns out to be half the Iowa delegation. And that means Iowa is still a player after Jan. 3. Because the presidential candidates will be back in town in early March, pitching for those uncommitted votes.

Why? One analysis I heard said that a single candidate would have to win 90% of all the votes in all the primaries and caucuses held from now through super-Tuesday on Feb. 5 to seal the Democratic nomination. With this race as tight as it is, that just isn’t going to happen. If Iowa has a large “uncommitted” delegation, Iowa will still be in play in mid-March.

This will be an exciting nomination process. Please help Dennis Kucinich in any way you can to get that nomination. Please help him become the Democratic candidate for president in 2008.

Spread the word. Contribute to his campaign (http://www.dennis4president.com). Volunteer. Collect petition signatures for him, if your state requires that.

His nomination is our first step on the way to winning back the White House, to bringing back America to its greatness, to the fulfillment of its promise of justice, equality, peace and prosperity for us all.

h/t: Dennis Kucinich for President (Official)

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see

Sign The Petition To Keep The Debates Open!! (Kucinich; Gravel; Paul)

Kucinich, top-rated Democrat, excluded from Des Moines Register debate + Action Alert (updated)

Kucinich excluded because Rubinstein works from home!?! + Action Alert (video)

How to Vote in Primaries and Not Be an Idiot by David Swanson

Caucus for Kucinich!

Poll-Polls

Dennis Kucinich for President - Contribute

http://december152007.com/

Kucinich-Dennis

Filed under: 2008 Election, Action Alert, Debate-Debates, Dennis Kucinich, Elections, Kucinich-Dennis, News &-or Politics, Politics, Survey

« The many problems of today - and a solution (video; Kucinich) Stop Harm: Logic Bomb #3 (video) »
6 Responses to “Dennis Kucinich and Thursday’s Iowa Debate By Jean Hay Bright”
Sign The Petition To Keep The Debates Open!! (Kucinich; Gravel; Paul) « Dandelion Salad, on December 14th, 2007 at 3:54 am Said:
[…] Dennis Kucinich and Thursday’s Iowa Debate By Jean Hay Bright […]

The Death Of Democracy - Silence The Opposition! by Michael O’McCarthy « Dandelion Salad, on December 14th, 2007 at 12:28 pm Said:
[…] Dennis Kucinich and Thursday’s Iowa Debate By Jean Hay Bright […]

GlitzQueen (aka The Other Katherine Harris), on December 14th, 2007 at 3:35 pm Said:
There was a rule that everybody chose to follow except Kucinich and Gravel. It’s silly to play “poor puppy” now. They excluded themselves by failure to do what they knew was required.

My own gripe about this year’s round of debates is that they’ve excluded much of the public, by not being carried on networks available to anyone with a TV. Without cable service more expensive than basic or Internet access, people have no access to the information except as filtered through reports by corporatist mainstream media.

There’s something Kucinich (or any other candidate) could rightfully complain about.

Faux & Friends: Dennis Kucinich Interview (video) « Dandelion Salad, on December 15th, 2007 at 12:42 am Said:
[…] Dennis Kucinich and Thursday’s Iowa Debate By Jean Hay Bright […]

dandelionsalad, on December 15th, 2007 at 1:25 am Said:
But he HAS an office and staff in IA, just not a storefront one. Businesses and campaigns nowadays have workers working from a home office. Great way to save on energy, imo.

POWER TO THE VOICES!, on December 15th, 2007 at 3:58 pm Said:
My two-cents published on the NY Times Caucus Blog:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/iowa-forecast-happy-to-be-here/

3.December 15th,
2007
11:04 am I AM FLABBERGASTED that Laura Hollingsworth, Carolyn Washburn and Carol Hunter scored the front page of the Times today in an article about the ‘coveted’ endorsement of the Des Moines Register, when this rag should be PUBLICLY VILIFIED for their blatantly undemocratic and FRAUDULENT excuses for not including Kucinich in the debate. There should be instead a general ethics inquiry into the Register, and these three shills should be FIRED and the paper made to post copious apologies for their CENSORSHIP.

I would like an explanation from the Caucus Blog and the NY Times as to why they won’t cover this scandal, nor apparently publush anyof the many comments that must be flooding your gates.

— Posted by JS

My respons to a reply (awaiting moderation):

To #6, Tom

And Alan Keys has ‘paid attention’ to Iowa, when he just joined the race last month and nobody even knew he was running? C’mon you’re not buying that malarkey are you?

I’m hardly a pundit nor politico, but Kucinich is more than ‘refreshing’, in fact he’s incredulously the ONLY candidate presently pushing the constitutional remedy the founders put in place for the very constitutional emergency we presently face.

He was barred on a supposed technicality, his campaign staffer worked from his house instead of a store-front. So this organization, the Des Moines Register gets to ‘uninvite’ Kucinich from a nationally televised critical debate prior to the first state litmus test on the candidates?

It’s preposterous! This is a matter of democracy in action derailed, and the Times, with all my due respect, and for some inexplicable reason refuses to cover it, hence you’re left in the dark.

Bet you didn’t even know that today 3 members of the House Judiciary issued a press release announcing their support of the Kucinich bill to impeach Cheney, a position in direct opposition to Congressman Conyers who heads the committee and is apparently for some mysterious reason bent on preventing the debate from reaching the house floor (not to mention a direct challenge to Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Hoyer who are bent on killing the bill entirely). This is huge news!

There is something seriously awry here, and it’s time we demanded of our most respectable press some answers for their abstinence.

This administrations fraudulent militaristic antics is a matter of national, constitutional emergency. Kucinich’s not having a storefront does not constitute a remotely legitimate reason from barring such a presently pivotal and historic lawmaker from a nationally broadcast candidates debate.

Wednesday December 19, 2007, 5:09 am
DONT VOTE, it only encourages them!

Wednesday December 19, 2007, 5:17 am
VOTE, or give up your rights, including your right to complain, be part of the process.

Wednesday December 19, 2007, 6:13 am
if you do NOT vote, why do you think you have the right to complain? It is the same as doing nothing.

At least I can say I didn't vote so-and-so into office, or I voted against a referendum that was passed anyway. If you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

There are people living in other countries who risk death to vote in elections. I only wish those in our "free" country would take this right to vote more seriously.

Friday December 21, 2007, 2:16 am
George Bush, Al Capone, And Wiseguy Government
By Sherwood Ross

It was in Chicago, that city made notorious by gangster Al Capone, where President Bush at an impromptu news conference in 2004 said if somebody in his crime family broke the law, “that person will be taken care of.” (Ha ha. Actually, Bush said “Administration,” not “crime family.”) Even so, truer words were never spoken. Bush “took care” of White House consigliere I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby by commuting his sentence after Libby’s conviction for lying to a grand jury, didn’t he? And if former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is right that Bush was behind Libby’s bid to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, we’ve got a criminal don-in-chief that can keep his accomplices out of the slammer.

When Capone ran Chicago, owners of 20,000 speakeasies poured his beer, and thousands of cops got paid to help him roll out the barrels. Chicago was so lawless New York Mafioso Lucky Luciano called it “a real goddamn crazy place! Nobody’s safe in the streets!” What might Luciano have said upon visiting don Bush’s Baghdad? Bush’s power far exceeds anything Al Capone wielded. Bush reached half way around the world to execute enemy Saddam Hussein for his alleged role in 9/11. At least, when mobster Joe (“Joe Cargo”) Valachi made a mistake he confessed, “You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy.” Bush thinks no apology is due for invading Iraq and lynching a fellow wiseguy.

Despite his crimes, Bush may never make the deserved journey from the White House to the Big House. The cowardly Congress allows him and his consiglieres to remain at large. They live well and dine well. When goodfellow Senator John McCain, an ardent Iraq war backer, spotted the dubious fare spread out for him at one campaign stop, he said, “I’d love some spaghetti.” McCain can eat for the many that are going hungry in Iraq tonight, thanks to his votes. Apparently, spaghetti sauce doesn’t remind McCain of you-know-what.

Unlike Capone, don Bush does not break laws to defy the government. He is the government. Bush has even more right than Capone to declare, “My rackets are run along strictly American lines.” He’s Capone gone global. Like Capone, Bush solemnly observes the Fourth of July and, also like Capone, he has earned the right to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. Capone wiped out seven associates of “Bugs” Moran in that infamous 1929 Chicago massacre. As of this November 23, according to Information Clearing House, Bush has eliminated 1,118,625 residents of Iraq. Capone would have been awed.

The thorn in Bush’s set-up is that, unlike traditional Mafia “made” men, his soldiers can quit. They’re jumping ship as his ratings plunge faster than a corpse chained to a block of cement tossed into the Chicago River. So he hires new loyalists. There’s Michael Mukasey, the nation’s second Jewish Attorney General, who will be a regular menace if he’s as ignorant of the commandment God gave Moses not to kill as he is of how the White House mob justifies torture. As Joey (“Crazy Joey”) Gallo of New York’s Profaci Crime Family once said, “You like Federal judges? I”ll buy you one for Christmas.” This holiday season, Mukasey may be the consigliere that helps eXterminator Bush put the X back in X-mas.

Those who regard don Bush as a failure just don’t get it. He’s pulled off the most sensational heist in the history of crime: his Iraq war has pushed global oil prices sky high. This just happened to improve the value of ExxonMobil and Chevron’s oil reserves by $666 billion and $250 billion, respectively, Greg Palast wrote in “Armed Madhouse” (Plume Books). The other oilglopolies are also bathing in boodle. Every motorist in America today is paying twice as much for gas ($3.09) as when don Bush took office ($1.52). As Jay Leno cracked on the “The Tonight Show:” “The Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to three people---the CEOs of Exxon, Texaco, and Shell for figuring out how to quadruple the price of oil over a seven-year period without an actual shortage.” And to think “Godfather’s” fictional don Vito Corleone dabbled in olive oil. If don Bush seeks a new career, he could give Hollywood a spaghetti western hero in the remake of “For a Few Dollars More.” It’s what wiseguy government is all about.

#
(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based reporter and press agent for good causes. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com) 305-205-8281

Friday December 21, 2007, 2:45 am
The world and this country have gone too far in the red for anything to be solved by any election. It can only get worse. The climate catastrophe is apon us and this is the beginning of the end. We missed our chance to riot. Now all we can do is watch TV, lol