Not that long ago, New York Senator Hillary Clinton acted as if she was a virtual shoe-in for the Oval Office.

Her defeat in the Iowa caucuses, her victory in New Hampshire and Nevada and the meaningless one in Michigan, didn’t change the fact that she was soundly and decisively beaten in the South Carolina democratic primary. Fifty five to 27 can certainly be considered a whipping.

Was it her arrogance, or her hubby’s, or maybe the combination of both?

A whole series of below the belt attacks on Senator Barack Obama, including the pre-Iowa remarks about him wanting to be president as early as in kindergarten, about his supposed involvement with a slum lord, questions whether Obama was “black enough” and calling him a “pothead” must have finally made people realize who the Clintons really are, I suppose.

Trying to bring everyone to THEIR level could not possibly be called a sound campaign strategy and quite honestly cannot be considered as anything besides tactics of people, who are not only insanely desperate for wielding power again, but also quite obviously devoid of class.

Bill Clinton last week criticized Obama’s statements over the years about Iraq, arguing that the senator has not been consistent.

Obama has said his positions are consistent and that he has always staunchly opposed the war. “She started her campaign saying she wanted to make history and has been spending a lot of time rewriting it”, he said.

The Clintons have long enjoyed support in the black community, but Hillary’s comments, which were perceived as minimizing the role that Martin Luther King played in the 1960s civil rights movement, really brought up the red flags in the black community.

Let’s not forget Hillary Clinton’s support of Bush’s disastrous foreign policy and her close ties with the defense contractors. And yes, let’s not forget her arrogance, an arrogance, which she has been so studiously “softening” in the past few weeks.

Technorati Tags: arrogance, bill, campaign, clinton, hillary, obama

The Bush administration has tried and partly succeeded in taking a lot of the credit for the visible abating of fighting in Iraq, claiming that the “surge” has succeeded.

In reality, a lot of the fighting has died, simply because the Sunnis, organized into the so-called “Awakening Council”, a group of Iraqi Sunni Muslims, discouraged by the brutal tactics of al-Qaida in Iraq, or al-Qaida in Mesopotamia stopped fighting us. That hasn’t exactly happened on its own. The U.S. military is paying the Sunni fighters on a regular basis – bribing them in fact not to fight us. If these people were given jobs and money right after the disbanding of the Iraqi army, as Jake Garner wanted to do and wasn’t allowed to, there probably wouldn’t have been much of an insurgency at all. The fact that some 70,000 Sunnis have simply stopped fighting the U.S. forces – for now, at least – doesn’t mean that the Sunnis are our allies. They simply see this as an opportunity to bring themselves back into the fold of influential groups in Iraq.

Arming them is a very naïve approach. Unless the Sunnis are actually given some meaningful, ministerial positions in the Iraqi government – and that hasn’t happened as yet – they will again turn against it and the occupying forces as well. It could also happen if we stop bribing them.

Saying that the surge is responsible for the relative lull in the fighting is even more naïve, or an outright lie.

U.S. officials call the Awakening Council a volunteer citizen’s group. I would prefer to call them a political front, a probable beginning of a dominant Sunni political party, not necessarily Baathist, but certainly a Sunni one. Considering all the trouble that the Sunnis have caused the occupation forces in the past several years belies the fact that Sunnis are definitely a minority group in Iraq, but a minority that is decisive and certainly well organized.

What in fact the Sunnis are most likely to be planning is basically the expulsion of all the foreigners from Iraq and that includes the foreign al-Qaida fighters and all of the coalition troops, including the U.S. forces, and to establish themselves in a position of power within the largely Shi’ite and Kurdish government.

So, please, do not give us the shortsighted fairy tales about the surge succeeding and about the brave “volunteer citizen groups” and realize that the lull in fighting will only last as long as the Sunnis want it to last.

Considering the huge divisions and religious, cultural and political discord, sooner, or later Iraq will have to face a point where it will divide along ethnic and cultural lines peacefully, or through a bloody civil war. The U.S. occupation is simply prolonging the agony and most likely it is costing more lives in total, than if we allowed the Iraqis to finally settle their scores.

Technorati Tags: al-qaida, awakening council, iraq, occupation, sunnis, US, war

Hillary Clinton’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and her foreign policy record regarding other international conflicts and her apparent eagerness to accept the use of force is common knowledge. In fact, there’s every indication that, as president, her foreign policy agenda would closely parallel that of the Bush administration.

Not challenging President Bush’s huge increases in military spending, Hillary Clinton prefers to argue that they are not enough and the United States needs to spend even more.

Her presidential campaign has received far more money from defense contractors than any other candidate – Democrat or Republican. Surprised?

She has defended the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which had provided that impoverished African country with more than half of its antibiotics and vaccines, falsely claiming it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden.

Clinton was also an outspoken supporter of Israel’s massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, which took the lives of at hundreds of civilians. She claimed that the carnage was justified since it would “send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians,” because, in her words, they oppose the United States and Israel’s commitment to “life and freedom.” Geez…

Clinton continues to defend that devastating 2006 war on Lebanon even though an Israeli government report did acknowledge that it was a major setback to Israeli security.

I could go on and on and on…but after the past seven years of Bush, is this kind of “leader” that we are looking for?

Technorati Tags: bush, clinton, defense contractors, hillary, iraq, israel, lebanon, palestinians, war

If you listen to all the endless speeches that the presidential candidates are giving over and over again…you will probably pass out. It is like torture. The same, worn-out concepts repeated over and over again.

I was always under the impression that the president’s main duties were related to national security and yes – to foreign policy. But if you listen to our current crop of candidates, you will hear very little of substance in that regard. They all keep repeating phrases about al-Qaida, about Iraq and Afghanistan. Some talk about bringing our troops home very quickly, others keep insisting that that would be a mistake.

It almost seems like there’s nothing important going on in the world besides those events.

I haven’t heard any of our candidates seriously discussing the obvious and very rapid rise of China’s power, or the rebirth of the new Soviet Union under Putin, nor the very fast increase of India’s economic and military influence, or the total mess in the Middle East and its central problem, namely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Are these people deaf and blind? Or maybe they are giving the electorate just the info that the average Joe expects to hear?

Some candidates did mention that if elected, they would do their best to improve America’s standing in the world. Commendable, but frankly, wouldn’t just getting rid of Bush and the neocons and stopping senseless wars go a very long way in that direction?

There has been some mention of re-establishing better alliances and diplomatic relations with other countries, but not that many specifics. A bit disappointing, I think, since the overall standing of the U.S. in the world has dropped to probably its lowest point in history. And therefore the new president’s major priority – besides fixing our broken health care system and the runaway lenders and banks, along with the processed food industry – should most certainly be returning the United States to the fold of righteous and respected nations.

Technorati Tags: afghanistan, campaign, candidates, china, foreign, india, iraq, policy, politics, putin, russia, soviet union, US

Although we have addressed more than once the way Americans elect their presidents, this time, we will give you a straightforward overview of the process.

This is not an endorsement of the convoluted procedures, but rather some information on how the process works at the present time.

To become a party’s nominee for president, a candidate has to win a majority of the votes that will be cast by delegates to the party’s convention this summer. Delegates are divided among states proportionally.

Most of the delegates are “pledged” to the candidate who wins the state’s primary or caucus. Each party in each state has its own guidelines for awarding delegates. Some states divide their delegations proportionately, based on the proportion of support for candidates in the primary or caucus. Others have a winner-take-all system. Some states’ party leaders select a few “unpledged” delegates as well. These delegates can vote for any candidate.

During the primaries and caucuses, Democrats will select 4,364 delegates. However, the Democratic Party has said that it does not plan to count Michigan’s 128 pledged delegates or Florida’s 185 pledged delegates at its convention because those states violated party rules by holding their primaries prior to February 5. If these delegates are counted, then a majority of 2,183 delegates are needed to win.

Republicans will elect at least 2,380 delegates, although it is possible that the number could be higher if the party revokes its punishment of Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan, Florida and South Carolina for scheduling their primaries before February 5. Currently, these states stand to lose half their delegations. As of now, a Republican candidate needs 1,191 delegates to win.

In short, both the Democratic and the Republican parties will base their decision on who to nominate as their candidate on the basis of the number of state delegates, chosen on the basis of the caucuses and the primaries, the endorsements each candidate receives, their speeches at the conventions, and also probably due to all kinds of back-door deals.

Therefore, a few months before the November elections we will actually find out who is running.

When the Election Day comes along, the actual winner will not be necessarily the one chosen by the electorate, but rather the one, who manages to win the most electoral votes from each state and as usual the Electoral College will actually determine the victor.

Today, a President must win 270 electoral votes, a majority, to become President. If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provides for Presidential election by the House of Representatives with each State delegation receiving one vote.

The Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote. The people of the United States vote for the electors who then vote for the President. The Electoral College, administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is not a place, it is a process that began as part of the original design of the U.S. Constitution.

Technorati Tags: caucuses, conventions, elections, electoral college, presidential, primaries, process, US