the ferrate howard dean was on J Leno to night and he is a ego maniac.i was simpathetic at the time when they said he was crazy, but how he acted on leno, confurmed the sad fact that he might be crazy.and a woman hater obsessed with his own power and importance.

Exactly .That’s what keeps her going 18 hrs a day for months….there is a knife point at the throat of Democracy and all that’s keeping it from going in is HRC. At this point,Hillary is like freaking Washington and Lincoln combined. And you know what? The impeachment mess taught her invaluable lessons in dealing with these bastards…number one is : never give up….and certainly NEVER QUIT!
Some of the same people that told Bill to quit are now telling her to stop.

HELL NO.

1st… Don’t let Donna have that kind of power over your heart strings..… ain’t worth it!

There is an aspect of the discussion re the real trigger behind the change in FL’s primary date to Jan 29th, that’s rarely highlighted.

Plus the rules to be applied in these cases were not properly followed by the DNC?

Apparently (if the reports in the ‘Nation’ and ‘HuffPost’ are factual) the Dem pols in FL found themselves in a real ‘catch 22’ situation, engineered by the Reps.

If true, this fact is usually suppressed everywhere (Media included) in the irrational statements of those who keep pushing the line that “they broke the rules.” Or, maybe lots of folks really don’t know enough of the details..

Secondly, seems that two states (South Carolina and Nevada) were awarded earlier slots this year. Twelve had applied. Full details here:

At http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071217/moser
they pointed out that

***********QUOTE***********

“This strange saga began innocuously enough. Fearing likely attempts by big states like Michigan and Florida to disrupt the parties’ primary calendars with early dates in 2008, Republicans and Democrats ruled at their 2004 conventions that states trying to butt in before Iowa and New Hampshire would lose half their delegates.

The Republicans left it there. The Democrats decided to try and fix things. The Democratic National Committee’s rules committee was tasked with bringing order to the chaotic primaries.

Twelve states applied for two additional early primary slots, which were awarded earlier this year to South Carolina and Nevada. Democrats in other states could not vote before February 5.”

“That created a sticky situation for Florida Democrats when, to nobody’s surprise, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a law in May scheduling the state’s primary for January 29. (In most states, primary dates are set by the parties.)”

[[And this is the critical part…….]]

“ The primary date was wrapped up in a bill mandating a paper trail for the 2008 election–a popular measure the minority Democrats could not afford to oppose”.

“ Besides, the loss of delegates was largely a toothless penalty, since according to precedent the Democrats’ eventual presidential nominee controls the seating of delegates–and surely wouldn’t alienate folks from the nation’s largest swing state by turning them away.” [my emphasis]

My Question:
[[Is it possible that this may be the motive for delaying the decision for soooo long? Why stall to this late in the ‘game’ ’if not to give the psychological edge and the illusion of the early advantage to a favoured candidate? Very few, (I imagine) keep track of the excluded votes and delegates, state after state, after state.]]

(Quote continued)

“But the DNC did not leave it there.

In August the rules committee voted to strip all the state’s delegates unless Florida came up with an alternative to the January 29 voting. “I understand Florida’s dilemma,” DNC rules committee member Donna Brazile told me later. “But this is not about states’ rights; this is about a process we’re trying to keep some control over.”

“ Two weeks after the DNC vote, Democratic chairs in the “First Four” primary states jacked up the ante with their notorious “four-state pledge” demanding the candidates focus exclusively on them. The signees–including John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton–agreed to do no campaigning in Florida or any other state that might try to jump the gun.”

[ Recently, someone shared with us, what that pledge looked like.]

“And under party rules, “campaigning” means just about everything: e-mail messages; calls to voters; TV, radio or newspaper ads; rallies; hiring campaign workers; holding press conferences. The only thing Democrats are allowed to do in Florida–where folks have been complaining for years, with some justification, about being used as an ATM for the party–is fundraise.“

[And we learnt that BO had ads running in FL state]

“As Florida Democrats bayed in protest, DNC chair Howard Dean salted their wounds by opining that their votes “essentially won’t count.” Almost overnight, the unsavory reputation Florida Republicans had earned during the riotous Gore v. Bush 2000 recount battle was relegated to ancient history, and the Republicans’ sagging hopes of carrying Florida–where Democrats scored big in the 2006 midterms–were suddenly sky-high.”

***** End Quote*****

It seems this situation prompted even Wayne Barret, (Huff Post) to explore the fiasco looking at the roles of the main protagonists and to ask:

“Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee? — The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan?”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-barrett/could-the-republicans-pic_b_94158.html

If he got his facts right, then the following comments on the apparent abdication of responsibility by the DNC to investigate whether there was indeed “misbehaviour’ on the part of the Dem leaders in FL is instructive:

******QUOTE******

Dems Take the Hit for the GOP

“The Republican role is not some irrelevant anecdote. The DNC is charged, under its rules, to determine whether the Democrats in a noncompliant state made a “good faith” effort to abide by the party’s electoral calendar, and to impose the full weight of its available penalties, namely a 100 percent takedown of a state’s delegation, only if Democratic leaders in that state misbehaved.

So the fact that it was Republicans who fomented the move-up of primaries in both these states to dates out-of-line with the DNC calendar is at the heart of the matter.

The rules also demand that the DNC’s 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee conduct “an investigation, including hearings if necessary” into these matters.

The purpose of such a probe is to figure out if Democratic leaders in a state that did move up “took all provable, positive steps and acted in good faith” to either “achieve legislative changes” to bring a state into compliance or to “prevent legislative changes” that took a state out of compliance.”

“A DNC spokesman could not point to any real “investigation” the party conducted of the actions of “relevant Democratic party leaders or elected officials,” as the rules put it. All that happened with Florida, for example, was that two representatives of the state party made a pitch for leniency immediately before the Rules Committee voted for sanctions.”

“What a probe might have discovered was a rationale for doing, at worst, what the RNC did to its own overeager primary schedulers in the same two states — cutting the delegations by half. That’s precisely the penalty specified in DNC rules, but the committee, exercising powers it certainly had the legal discretion to exercise, upped the ante as far as it could.

In a bizarre reversal of public policy, the RNC, surely aware that the principal miscreants in both states were Republicans, applied a sane yet severe sanction. The Democrats opted for decapitation.”

***END QUOTE****

[And recently we got access to info on how Team BHO deliberately orchestrated a campaign for their supporters to vote “uncommitted” in MI.]

Perhaps the fundamental question is:

WHO REALLY BROKE THE RULES?!

And perhaps this, among the host of other mini-atrocities, explains why HRC picks up her knapsack, every time she’s kicked off the edge of the canyon, scrambles back to the trail and keeps pressing on. Seems to me her mission was expanded for her, not BY her.

The battle morphed into perhaps a MORAL WAR, one that goes to the heart of the fundamental principles and values that this country, in it’s finest hours, has embraced and defended.

Many of her supporters may not know it yet, but they are perhaps defending a CAUSE that may well be beyond mere physical stuff.

Makes me wonder,

WHO REALLY is the TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER?

When you have courageous leaders who risk friends, health, finances, colleagues, sponsors, life’s comforts and everything they have, to defend their country, be it woman or man, the people have a responsibility

to understand the mission,

enlist,

train,

educate,

contribute,

stay focused

and soldier on to the deadly (dare I say ‘bitter’?)
end!

For the youths, a more powerful lifelong lesson could not be gained from reading the history books, as from experiencing firsthand this unfolding modern day quiet revolution!

Pse forgive the length….

This is a train wreck.

Were we to characterize the party leadership by Howard Dean, they would not dare to push Obama under the bus in favor of a more electable candidate. They lack the spine.

It’s a goddamn shame that Hillary Clinton has the biggest balls in the party.

Now for our bitter moment of the day.
The leadoff without comment in Mo Dowd’s latest nastygram to the Clintons:

In grim times, a bitter Hillary clings to bitter voters who in grim times supposedly cling to guns, religion and antipathy to people who aren’t like them.

I saw that interview with Greta and Rove and it was the single most important analysis of this election so far. The SDs really should look at it. Say what you will about Rove–and I yield to noone in my dislike of him–the man knows how to win elections. And remember, he too had to sell a candidate that was weak, arrogant, inexperienced, and fraudulent. But he did it successfully. Twice.