Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Hillary gets by with lots of help from her friends

OK everyone; it’s time that we look at last night’s primary showdown to see who really won those primaries in Ohio and Texas. Was it Hillary? If we only look at the numbers we might say she did. The media said so. If we forget the numbers for a minute, and look closer at some of the very strange things that happened both prior to, and during those primaries, it might cause us to conclude that not only did Hillary not win; she robbed our country of some very important things by using desperate and underhanded tactics to stay in the race. Those things lost include trust in our electoral system, the people who oversee it, and who report on it.

We cannot have a functioning republic without representation, and the voting process is where that representation begins. Votes are the voices, and power of a self-governing people. When politicians use acts of deception, racism and fear mongering to win primaries, they rob us not only of the opportunity to cast a real and honest vote, they help set the stage for the election of people who may not be the best to lead this country, thereby abusing the power we grant, and the trust we give them to oversee our electoral process. When politicians appeal to our most primitive instincts, they prevent the maturation of our society, which is the electorate. As a consequence, this lack of maturation stifles our countries intellectual and spiritual progress. When a person is willing to do anything to garner power, we must ask ourselves what they will do once their goal is achieved. If it’s true that our country desires changes in our political culture and methods, Hillary’s dirty tricks might indicate that she is not the best one to bring that change about.

Hillary’s underhanded attacks on Obama began with her racial attacks in South Carolina, and her husband’s implication that Obama’s campaign is a fairy tale because he’s not white. They didn’t learn from their loss in South Carolina that such tactics turn people off. What they learned was that racism does not work against an African American when the majority of voters in that state’s party are also African American. So rather than remove race from her political armory, Hillary saved it to use in Ohio and Texas, and exchanged her Latino campaign director for an African American. Who in their right mind could accuse an African American of using racism against another African American? Anyone who knows that money talks, and if you are Hillary anything goes when it comes to getting elected.

Racism was not the only unsavory tactic Hillary Clinton employed to win Ohio and Texas. Her suggestion that Obama might be a Muslim fed right into the Islamophobia that was created by the media following 9/11, and exploited by desperate, and low lived politicians ever since. Using rumors of Obama having a secret Muslim religion seemed kind of risky for a woman whose husband pledged US unconditional support to Israel, then violated the Geneva Conventions designating Hamas a terrorist organization by executive order. Bill wore a yamaka during his term in the White House and never a cross, and he celebrates Yom Kippur. He also gave a foreign policy speech from a synagogue and never from a Church or mosque.

Hillary’s “who to trust at 3am in the Whitehouse” commercial was another attempt to use Islamophobia and fear to capture votes, but it wasn’t as bad as the help Hillary was given by her friends in high places. In true Clinton style, they bombed Somalia the day before primary day, killing an entire family, including innocent women and children. This, so they could remind us that we are in a war on terrorism, and so they could plaster the face of a very Arab looking man with a very Muslim sounding name on television, who is alive, yet supposedly wanted in connection to a suicide bombing in Israel. How that led to a US attack on Somalia, and not an Israeli attack was not explained. Also, someone needs to tell those people that Somalis don’t look like the stereotypical Arab. The Somalia attack also bolstered the neo-cons claim that Al-Qadea is in Somalia, which in turn provides an excuse for the US funded, and instigated Ethiopian occupation of Somalia. It also took the focus off the economy for a few days, and put it squarely on national security, which Hillary’s neo-con handlers believe is her strong point. Remember when Hillary’s husband Bill was president and they used to bomb Iraq every other day, killing Iraqi civilians to distract us from their scandals, most notably the Monica Lewinsky scandal? It also seems a bit strange that Israel ended its brutal and illegal attack against Palestinians in Gaza that left nearly 50 innocent civilians dead, the day before the primary, and then began it all over again the day of the primary. Will a Hillary presidency bring us peace?

Some pretty suspicious things also happened in Ohio that might cause us to question the integrity of Hillary’s supposed Ohio victory. In Cleveland, which is a Zionist, and Clinton stronghold in Ohio, the polls were left opened until 9:30, while they were closed everywhere else in Ohio at 7:30. That gave Clinton’s people two extra hours to vote. There are also reports that some of the polling places ran out of paper ballots, and so some people who showed up at the polls did not get to vote, while others were forced to enter their votes into the black hole of electronic voting devices, controlled by who know who. Prior to the primary election there was quite a bit written in Ohio newspapers about the use of paper ballots, instead of electronic voting, and it was decided that both should be made available. Seems that before Hillary got into primary trouble, Democrats wanted to use paper ballots, and to give Ohio voters a choice. Yesterday, with Clinton in trouble, they somehow ran out of paper ballots. You’d think with there being census numbers available, they would know just about how many paper ballots would be needed. Also, let’s not forget the bomb threat called in at one of the polling places, which doubles as a school.

The list of Clinton Super Tuesday oddities doesn’t stop there. There were others that had no direct or indirect link to Hillary, but that might have something to do with zealots who feel that they dislike Obama, more than they love Hillary. Did anyone think it was strange that Al Qadea issued a press release saying that Obama is an Iranian agent two days before the vote? This bit of news scrolled across the bottom of one cable TV’s news program, while it was breaking news for another. That’s the second time that Al-Qadea has popped up to help Hillary. The first time was after her first, not the second crying spell, where she said that she wants to convince us that Al-Qadea is still a threat to the US. This time Al-Qadea seemed to be responding to suggestions that the Democratic party would ask Hillary to bow out of the race if she lost Ohio and Texas, or if she did not win them by wide margins, which she didn’t. Then there was the shooting suicide at Wendy’s in Florida, and a school bus flip over that made the national news, both things that rattle our nerves and get us to wondering who is best to protect us, Clinton or Obama.

Did Hillary really win Texas and Ohio? We’ll never know by just looking at the numbers. What we do know is that America lost something yesterday, and what was lost is faith in our system and hope that it will ever be changed. Unless Obama gets up to steam and realizes that he can only float so high above the fray, hope will be forever vanquished by the dirty tricks of the cynical and hopeless, and the change hoped for will be, as Bill so aptly put it, just a fairy tale.

No comments: