Has anybody dared to venture over to the wild side lately?

[Aussie leftie]

I have been writing the odd post and reading many on "General Discussion Primaries". If the Obama supporters and Clinton supporters are in the same party, you'd never guess. The obscenities and viciousness written about the candidates (mainly Hillary Clinton) would make a wharfie blush.

Thank god we let the politicians choose the candidates in our political system.

[Esra Star]

1. I think the theory is that it is some sort of

distillation process. I'm not sure how it is supposed to get a result though.
In the end I think it means that the politically uneducated trust nobody, and are cynical
about the entire process.
The democratic system in the US is badly in need of repair. They have to start with the constitution.
Jefferson said that the document would need to be revised regularly (read around 100 years).
I'm not holding my breath though. I think they'll go down the toilet, like every other
empire that overstretched itself for too long. The bankruptcy will be complete when the US dollar
is dumped in favour of the Euro.

[Random_Australian]

2. Agreement here.

I think at some time our democracy will face the same challenges as theirs did (assuming past tense because there is no way in hell this happened to America overnight). I wonder how, or if, we will cope.


But yeah, good luck trying to repair the hell anything with the democratic system there. In complete honesty, I have seen very few people with any interest in "a fair system in which each voice is heard" and lots with an interest in "Only those with reasonable opinions should be heard. In this case, reasonable is the same as agreeing with me".

In fact, everything I've read about any kind of mainstream thought in America points directly away from anything non-partisan.

Not that I can fault people, though. I think the system had a lot to do with it, but then again what people allowed the system to bear its fruit?

[Esra Star]

3. How to make our democracy more robust in order for it

to survive an assault by fascists? Always a good question.
Firstly, I would make sure the "President/Governor General" was non-political.
This can be achieved by having the person appointed by a 60% majority of a joint sitting.
I see this point as being the biggest failure of the US system.
Secondly, I would keep the Senate as the house of review. I'm not sure that the current
method of electing the Senate is ideal, though. We do end up with some pretty weird people
there from time to time.

[Matilda]

4. I think Australians will have to accept that future Presidents of the Republic of Australia

will be elected by the Parliament. Most politicans are against direct election, and unless they
agree to put the question to referendum, it will never happen. As it would be election by a two-
thirds majority of both Houses, it would probably be bi-partisan and acceptable.

And I also wish there could be a way of streamlining the Senate elections to make it impossible for
the lunatic fringe to actually gain a seat - like Family First, elected to the Senate with 2% of
the vote, because of preferences. I think there should be a cut-off figure - perhaps 4%, which is
the cut-off to obtain federal funding - whereby any candidate with less than that in primary votes
is automatically disqualified from the final count.

[Esra Star]

5. Fortunately lunatic fringe senators are an aberration

albeit that it goes on for six years. The PHONY party (Pauline Hanson's One Nation Yobbo's)
seem to have bitten the dust. Her initial success was based on people being unable to see through a specious argument in the short term. If only we could get everyone watching the ABC and not those
tabloid rubbish "current affairs" shows on the commercial channels.
Civilisation is a long slow process.

[Matilda]

6. They only matter when there's virtually a hung Senate,

like now. Fielding's influence is out of proportion to his representative base.

It was fortunate that during Hanson's heyday, she was largely irrelevant, and I'm sure her run last
year was purely for the money she could get in funding. The cut-off is 4% of the primary vote,
and she got 4.2% - some idiots never learn.

[Esra Star]

7. Hey, Matilda... I just had to share this with somebody..

I heard George Brandis on Radio National this morning discussing the 2020 summit.
He actually dug up the rotting corpse of the "lying rodent".
He dug it up and held it up for all to worship because.....get this....
"It was He who was responsible for all the goodness in Australia today."

What an f/wit. Apparently he hasn't got the election result yet.

On another note I thought the 2020 was a masterstroke.


Cheers

[Matilda]

8. I've noticed that Brandis keeps getting stuck into Rudd

for the most ridiculous things, and the "lying rodent" incident keeps coming into my mind.

You can shut it, George - the little toad has gone, you don't have to pander to him any more!

[Matilda]

9. Pauline strikes again ...

Revelations yesterday that Pauline has siphoned off around $200,000 from her party's funds into her
own bank account - that's our money, as it came from election funding.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23601959-952,00.html

The woman can't help herself, but what about those cretins who persist in voting for her? I can
hear them now: "don't worry, Pauline, it's all those socialists out to get you, but we know you're
honest, and you'll always get our vote"...

It was always clear that she had little chance of winning a Senate seat and probably doubtful that
she wanted to, but for the second time (that we know of), she's helped herself to party funds. The
laws really do need to be tightened - how about if you've defrauded the electorate once and done
time for it, you can't ever run for a seat again?

[Esra Star]

10. Sorry this reply is a bit late, but I just noticed your post..

That whole "throwing Pauline in jail" thing was a bit of a mistake in my opinion.
I remember thinking it was all a bit technical.
Bottom line.. somebody sent her a cheque and said "this is for you".
She just said "great" and banked it. Then others noticed the problem and ran with it.
It was the first time I felt sorry for her.
I don't agree with her views, but I defend her right to express them.
By having all that bile out there, we can discuss it, and expose it.
If it all remains unsaid, it is never dealt with and will resurface every generation.
Or until civilisation has moved on.

[Matilda]

12. This time, she transferred funds from the United Australia Party

into a personal account belonging to her and a friend. This is also what
she did last time.

"Ms Hanson admits to taking the money in recorded phone conversations during which the party treasurer pleads with her to return the funds.The $202,440 was paid into the accounts of Pauline's United Australia Party, the vehicle for Ms Hanson's Senate bid at the 2007 election.

Bank records seen by The Sunday Mail show the transfers of Australian Electoral Commission money out of an account controlled jointly by party officials and Ms Hanson, into another account controlled by Ms Hanson and a close friend."

......

"Management at the bank involved refused to explain how Ms Hanson was able to transfer the funds out of an account that required two out of the three signatures of the party treasurer Graham McDonald, his wife Jan and Ms Hanson. The bank cited privacy laws.

Mr McDonald, a Brisbane businessman, said: "I'm so disappointed. She never really put the effort into the campaign. If she's not going to run (again), what's going to happen to the money?"

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23601959-952,00.html


The bank seems to be culpable too, at least of negligence, but the whole
thing I think is summed up by the words: "She never really put the
effort into the campaign." No, because she never intended to win, she
only wanted enough votes to be able to get election funding, and she
knew there were enough dummies out there to give her the vote.

The woman is not only an unbelievably ignorant racist, she's a crook.
I don't care whether she gets another jail term or not, but she should
be barred from politics for good.

[CBHagman]

11. May I please come live in Australia?

I just switched off one of my favorite TV news programs because the host devoted several segments to Hillary Clinton's reference to Robert Kennedy's assassination. There was much trotting out of tut-tutting males and much psychoanalyzing.

Then I turned on my computer and opened the DU discussion page and found that someone, under the pretext of demanding an apology from Hillary Clinton, had posted a video of the dying RFK.

Yes, that should pretty much convey the full extent of our sensitivity here in the States and, to some extent, here at DU. :sarcasm:

I suspect the pundits and some of my fellow DUers are just rejoicing in the fact that this will drive the final nail into the coffin for Hillary Clinton's candidacy. We have such a short attention span in this country, but the media really whips things into a frenzy while they can manage it, and it usually boils down to something someone said rather than an actual policy or action.

[Matilda]

13. Hi, C.B! I'm sure all progressives are welcome to this country.

The more we can get, the less likely we'll get another Howard being
elected.

But I've been away from DU for a couple of days, and I didn't see the
incident you refer to with Hillary. What was it about?

[CBHagman]

14. Uh-oh, you'd better pull up a chair.

There's been a media firestorm over comments Hillary Clinton made on the campaign trail regarding her decision to stay in the race for the Democratic nomination. Normally that would be nothing much to report, but here's the nature of the comments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/politics/24clinton.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” she said. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Here's the video, which provides the context for her comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v65tWn0URhs

In the for-what-it's-worth department, here's a link to some of the political coverage of the campaign, including the delegate counts:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032553/



Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who supports Hillary Clinton's candidacy, issued the following statement:

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/05/23/statement-from-robert-kennedy-jr/

“It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June. I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband’s 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense.”

The reference to Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign is a bit disingenuous, given that his main competition for the nomination, Paul Tsongas, dropped out of the race relatively early. In fact, here in the U.S., we're accustomed to knowing who the presumptive nominees are by spring.

But it is true that in the horrific year of 1968 the Democratic race was competitive in June. Bobby Kennedy had just won the California primary and was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan literally moments after the victory speech to supporters. I'm of an age to have seen both the extremely graphic still photos of that horrible event at the time and, later on, the film footage of the speech and shooting, and it's still unbearable for me to look at them. Many of my fellow citizens don't treat the Kennedy assassinations in a reverent fashion, particularly since the footage of JFK's assassination has been shown and re-shown and fed the conspiracy theories, but I cannot think of that event and the other assassinations (Martin Luther King's, RFK's) as anything other than a national tragedy.



RFK Sr. with Dr. King

After all I've written, you will perhaps be astonished to hear that I am willing to cut Hillary Clinton considerable slack for this comment, but I am utterly furious that someone at DU posted the video of RFK under pretext of asking her to apologize.

Don't get me wrong; I see why people are deeply upset at the mention of an assassination. But A) it isn't now and never was news to me that nutcases out there want to harm candidates and B) I do understand the context of the comments. I have a media job myself and often guess at what comments are going to be lifted whole out of a transcript or clip and analyzed and overanalyzed by the media.

Getting to the further context, nerves would be frayed anyway at this point in the year, given the constant taking of the national political temperature, the length of the campaign, etc. But the entire country was shaken last week by the news that Senator Edward Kennedy, younger brother of the late Joseph Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, has been diagnosed with the sort of brain tumor that could possibly indicate he has but months to live.

At this writing, there's no public disclosure, and possibly private diagnosis, of precisely which type this tumor is, but it is malignant, and it is not an exaggeration to report that Kennedy's Senate colleagues' public responses have ranged from stunned shock to palpable grief. Ninety-year-old Robert Byrd wept openly during his tribute to Kennedy on the floor of the Senate.



Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) with a gentleman some of you may recognize

[Matilda]

15. Thanks for the background, C.B.

I did see a newsclip about it last night on the BBC, but it was very
short, and there was no discussion about her remarks.

I think it was a tactless remark, but not a hanging offence. In fact,
I'm inclined to think that her remark of a week or so ago to Bill
O'Reilly - "the rich, God bless us" - deserved far more condemnation
than it received. I thought that little bit of hubris would have put
every struggling family in the country offside; but no, it caused only
the briefest splutter in the news and even on the blogs. I found it
tasteless and arrogant in the extreme, but few seemed to share my
feelings about it, so it just goes to show that I'm no judge of how
people think.

I too remember Bobby's assassination (although being something of a
conspiracy theorist myself, I don't believe that Sirhan fired the fatal
shot). Strange, I have no idea where I was or how I heard the news of
the shooting; perhaps because I didn't believe that he could really die,
and so the event wasn't implanted irrevocably on my brain at that time.
But I do recall exactly where I was and even what I was wearing when I
heard the news of his death, at about 7.0pm local time. I also recall
watching that long train journey carrying his coffin back east, with
people gathering by the railroad tracks all along the route to pay
their respects.

I also grieve that Teddy's career will now probably fizzle out, instead
of ending with a glorious bang. Not wishing any ill at all towards
Senator Byrd, but I figure this has to be his last term, and then Teddy
would have become the Senate Pro Tem, assuming Democrats have control
of the House after November. That would have been a fitting way for him
to go out, but it seems unlikely now that it will be at all possible.
After a rocky start, it was Teddy in the end who truly became the
consummate progressive politician, and was the one to finally deliver
on the promise of the early Kennedy years.