Obama i SAD (2008-2016)

[danas]

Koliko mi je poznato svi kandidati prije ili kasnije bivaju upitani koje su denominacije.

upravo u tome je problem -- sto se ikako i pita...

[jasko_ba]

uff, da mi je se ovako dočepati Hillary, sreći nikad kraja

[jeza u ledja]

Hajd bas me zanima - da li bi iko od vas ko bi inace u duelu Obama vs McCain glasao za Obamu, u slucaju da bude Clinton vs McCain glasao za McCaina?

[shadow]

Ja ne bih! Prije ne bih izasao na izbore nego dao glas republikancu.

[poktapok]

U krvi (socijal)Demokrata, tj. ljevicara je da ih ljudi lako okarakterisu kao 'beskicmenjake'. Tako to obicno biva.
Ja mislim da je pitanje postavljeno Obami da li je on musliman sasvim prihvatljivo.

Demokrate su partija mrtvog i ukopanog centra. Socijal-demokratija, izuzevsi par iskrica koje s vremena na vrijeme promrzlima daju lazni ugodjaj, kao politicka struja u Americi ne postoji.

Posljednji socijal-demokrata je bio F.D. Roosevelt, koji je, iako u invalidskim kolicima, imao itekakvu kicmu.

[water]

Hajd bas me zanima - da li bi iko od vas ko bi inace u duelu Obama vs McCain glasao za Obamu, u slucaju da bude Clinton vs McCain glasao za McCaina?

joj izbora, jebem ti zemlju dje zivim
daj nam posudite komsica na cetiri godine eto vam hilari

[jeza u ledja]

U krvi (socijal)Demokrata, tj. ljevicara je da ih ljudi lako okarakterisu kao 'beskicmenjake'. Tako to obicno biva.
Ja mislim da je pitanje postavljeno Obami da li je on musliman sasvim prihvatljivo.

Demokrate su partija mrtvog i ukopanog centra. Socijal-demokratija, izuzevsi par iskrica koje s vremena na vrijeme promrzlima daju lazni ugodjaj, kao politicka struja u Americi ne postoji.

Posljednji socijal-demokrata je bio F.D. Roosevelt, koji je, iako u invalidskim kolicima, imao itekakvu kicmu.

Tacno.

[poktapok]

Pa sta cemo?

Mogla bi se osnovati nova partija.

[jeza u ledja]

Pa sta cemo?

Mogla bi se osnovati nova partija.

[domi]

Pa sta cemo?

Mogla bi se osnovati nova partija.

Pa, ima partija Zelenih.

U svakom slucaju, ovi izbori ce biti komplikovani i teski pogotovo za Demokrate, koji bi nakon ovih 15-tak godina vladavine Republikanaca i njihovih rezultata trebali dobiti glatko ove izbore, ali...

Na scenu ce ubrzo stupiti Blumberg, koji ce svojom lovom, odnosno medijskom kampanjom uzeti dosta glasova od strane onih koji ne bi glasali ni u snu za Republikance, ali koji istovremeno ne vjeruju ni Demokratima.

Tu ce jos vjerovatno biti i Ron Paul, drugi nezavisni kandidat, kao jos jedan magnet za gubljenje nezavisnih glasaca od strane Demokrata, jos ako Huse dobije prajmeriz, Republikanci bi jos mogli i da dobiju ove izbore.

[Šandor]

Joj tebe Danas. I sama si neki dan rekla da predsjednik ne može biti niko ko ne kaže da je dobar kršćanin. A sad se čudiš što se Obama dokazuje.

[danas]

Joj tebe Danas. I sama si neki dan rekla da predsjednik ne može biti niko ko ne kaže da je dobar kršćanin. A sad se čudiš što se Obama dokazuje.

ne cudim se nego mi je muka od svega

[jeza u ledja]

Tu ce jos vjerovatno biti i Ron Paul, drugi nezavisni kandidat, kao jos jedan magnet za gubljenje nezavisnih glasaca od strane Demokrata, jos ako Huse dobije prajmeriz, Republikanci bi jos mogli i da dobiju ove izbore.

Ovdje mi pade na pamet jedna stvar. Mescini da je moguce da kandidat koji je bio ucesnik na prajmariz poslije izadje na izbore kao nezavisni kandidat. Ako sam u pravu onda me ne bi cudilo da Ron Paul to pokusa. Mislim da je skupio dovoljno novaca da bi mogao tako nesto napraviti. Sta mislite o tome? Mislim da postoji 5-10% hardcore Ron Paul fanova nationwide koji bi mogli itekako pomutiti rezultate predsjednickih izbora. Jos ako se tu ukljuci Bloomberg. Sta mislite?

[domi]

Ovdje mi pade na pamet jedna stvar. Mescini da je moguce da kandidat koji je bio ucesnik na prajmariz poslije izadje na izbore kao nezavisni kandidat. Ako sam u pravu onda me ne bi cudilo da Ron Paul to pokusa. Mislim da je skupio dovoljno novaca da bi mogao tako nesto napraviti. Sta mislite o tome? Mislim da postoji 5-10% hardcore Ron Paul fanova nationwide koji bi mogli itekako pomutiti rezultate predsjednickih izbora. Jos ako se tu ukljuci Bloomberg. Sta mislite?

Jeste, moguce je da se stranacki kandidati nakon prajmeriza kandiduju za predsjednicke izbore kao nezavisni kandidati. Osim Ron Paula i Blumberga tu ce vjerovatno biti i uvijek nezaobilazni Nader, koji je sa svojih par posto glasaca, koji bi najvjerovatnije glasali za Demokrate da njega nije bilo, poklonio Busu izbore zadnji put. Ili bar u najmanju ruku pruzio vecu sansu Republikancima da iste laziraju. Sve u svemu izgleda da prokorporacijski lobi napada sa vise strana ovaj put. Uz sve to jos ako, kako izgleda do sada, Obama ili G-da Klintonova dobiju kao sto rekoh demokratske prajmeriz, svi su izgledi da ce se stvari odvijati istim tokom kao do sada i nakon '08.

Ne daj se US of A!

[danas]

Slate

The Case Against Hillary Clinton
Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, at 12:15 PM ET

Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2182065/

[jeza u ledja]

Evo interesantan clanak o McCainu iz danjasnjeg TIME magazina.

The Resurrection of John McCain



In war and in politics, John McCain has endured more than his share of near death experiences. He's been shot out of the sky and held captive, hung from ropes by his two broken arms and beaten senseless. This is his second run for President; he lost before, has nearly lost again and has been all but disowned by his party. So on the night of South Carolina's Republican primary, when the victory he needed to keep his campaign alive seemed as if it might be slipping away once again, McCain stood silent amid the chaos of his crowded hotel suite, his eyes fixed on the television screen. The normally loquacious Senator, who is rarely silent and hates to miss a punch line, was tuning the rest of the room out. Rumors that the primary was about to be called for McCain had fizzled, supplanted by whispers that Mike Huckabee had taken a slim lead in the ballot count. For a moment, it all seemed as though it were going to fall down again.

But the announcement came: "McCain wins South Carolina!" The room erupted in cheers; McCain's wife Cindy dissolved into tears; and the candidate's pale, scarred, 71-year-old face spread into a triumphant grin. "Whether it was because of what happened eight years ago in South Carolina or because his campaign was declared dead last July, I don't know," says Mark Salter, McCain's adviser, speechwriter and alter ego. "But he was as happy as I've ever seen him." The old warrior in McCain has learned to savor every battle won because he knows it could be the last.

McCain has traveled a long road to get where he is now, positioned as the ever-so-slight front runner for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Last summer his once formidable campaign all but collapsed in debt and acrimony, with even his closest friends and advisers questioning whether he should bother marching on.

Now having won two important early contests (New Hampshire came first), McCain finds himself burdened with the front-runner label for the second time in a month, the third time in the past year and the fourth time since the 2000 primaries, when he challenged, briefly triumphed over and then was crushed in South Carolina by George W. Bush. Up to this point in McCain's career as a presidential candidate, becoming the man to beat has meant, inexorably, that he was about to be beaten.

Whether that history repeats itself may depend on Florida, where the GOP primary is a closed affair. That means no independents or crossover Democrats, the voters who secured McCain's victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, are permitted to cast ballots. If McCain does manage to win in such a pure party contest, it could be enough to persuade Republicans, desperate for clarity in this wild election cycle, to rally around him. "Florida is turning out to be the decisive state for the Republican Party," says Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole's 1996 campaign. "Whoever comes out on top is going to have a tremendous amount of momentum."

Maybe. But John McCain has been in presidential politics long enough to know that there is always the McCain exception to every rule. After he decisively beat former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in neighboring New Hampshire, McCain's low-budget campaign expected a windfall of fresh donations to help propel it forward. But the haul was disappointing; donors still weren't ready to buy in to a candidate they view as too much of a risk. The towering obstacle between McCain and victory is not so much his rivals for the nomination but the suspicion long held by many Republicans, especially rock-ribbed conservatives, that the Senator and former war hero is too much the maverick on issues that matter deeply to them to be trusted to occupy the White House.

GOP Jitters

Conservative fears about McCain are often irrational: through a 25-year career in Congress, first in the House and then in the Senate, McCain has proved himself consistently pro-life on abortion and a hawk on defense, a scourge of wasteful government spending and a generally reliable vote in favor of tax cuts. Yet at last year's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of party power brokers, McCain was booed.

Conservative élites are the ones most likely to break out into hives at the mention of McCain's name. Former Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay has declared that he would not vote for McCain in the general election, even if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic nominee. Railing against McCain and Huckabee, both of whom he views as anathema to conservatives, talk-radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh recently warned his 13.5 million listeners, "If either of these two guys gets the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party." A few days later, Limbaugh was so outraged by the possibility that Republicans might support McCain that he bellowed, "If you Republicans don't mind McCain's positions, then what is it about Hillary's positions you dislike? They're the same!"

The truth is that McCain and Clinton remain far apart on the political spectrum. But it is also true that conservatives have a lengthy bill of complaint against McCain. In the past decade he has joined with Democrats on a series of crusades in Congress — with Russ Feingold on campaign-finance reform and Ted Kennedy on immigration reform — that a majority of Republicans have opposed. He voted against President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and '03, each time citing the need for fiscal restraint. And during his 2000 campaign, he labeled Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance."

He has seemed to delight in doing battle with members of his own party and creed. "John's mistake is that he makes it personal," says a close friend in Washington. "When he's convinced he's doing the right thing, he has a hard time staying above the fray." All the while — and this may be what galls conservatives most — McCain has been hailed by liberals and lionized in the mainstream news media for being a rebel.

This maverick reputation, so prized for its general-election appeal, makes it difficult for McCain to pass the primary threshold. As was the case in 2000, McCain in 2008 has yet to win even a plurality of Republican votes in a presidential primary outside his home state of Arizona and the generally liberal Northeast.

This frustrates McCain, something I saw over dinner with him in Washington in May 2002, when McCain told me he was probably through with running for President. He had tried it two years before and almost pulled off a historic upset against Bush. But, he said, "you can't bottle lightning." Twice during dinner, patrons went over to shake McCain's hand and urge him to run again — against Bush in 2004 — as an independent or Democrat. The Senator was gracious and noncommittal. But after the second time, he gave me an exaggerated roll of his eyes and shook his head. "I'm a Republican, for chrissakes!"

The Right Stuff

But conservative and independent voters have the same question about McCain: What kind of Republican is he? In 2000, when the U.S. was at peace and the economy was luxuriating in the frothy end days of the first Internet boom, McCain's first campaign was about character and biography much more than issues. McCain was the authentic hero, the fighter pilot who had been shot down over Hanoi and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war. He was the reformer and the straight talker, the rare politician who — perhaps because of his experience as a POW — wasn't going to compromise his principles or hold his tongue to please his party. He was also, at his core, still the rowdy, runty, red-tempered plebe who finished near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy despite an IQ of 133. McCain became a symbol in 2000 of courage and candor. Few took close looks at his policy positions. It was almost enough to get him the Republican nomination.

This time is different. Character and authenticity still matter, but McCain's reputation as an expert on defense and foreign affairs carries far greater weight in the post-9/11 world than it did eight years ago. On Iraq, McCain supported the invasion and still does. But he was an early critic of the way the Bush Administration was prosecuting the war and called for a change in strategy that would include a surge in U.S. troops to gain control of Baghdad. At the time, advocating an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq rather than a reduction was unpopular even within the GOP. But McCain stood by Bush when the policy was implemented.

For all his expertise, McCain tends to prefer blunt declarations about Iraq — "the surge is working." He says U.S. troops should remain in Iraq for 100 years if necessary. What he doesn't often discuss are the trade-offs required to sustain an unending commitment to a war that drains more than $9 billion from the U.S. Treasury every month. Instead, he is dismissive of those who doubt that he's right. "It's almost a ludicrous argument — 'How long are we going to stay?'" McCain insisted to me between campaign stops in Florida's panhandle. "It's like asking 'How long are we going to stay in Japan?' Well, we've been there since World War II."

The success of the troop surge has given McCain points for prescience and reaffirmed his political courage. Yet there's a downside too. As violence in Iraq has ebbed, economic anxiety has rocketed to the top of voters' concerns. This shift exposes one of McCain's weaknesses. He is a conviction politician, passionate about the issues that animate him, dismissive of and uninterested in those that don't. Iraq, foreign policy, the military and treatment of veterans — these topics get him excited. In the domestic realm, he's fire and energy when he rails against pork-barrel spending. But mention other issues — taxes, health care, education policy — and he briefly resorts to talking points before changing the subject. "Obviously, the economy is a very, very vital issue," he told me. "There's no doubt about that, O.K.? But the issue that's going to be with us after the economy recovers is the challenge of radical Islamic extremism, of which Iraq is the central battleground."

Can't Help Himself

What's both refreshing and vaguely masochistic about McCain is that even when he knows it's in his short-term political interest to dodge a question or adjust his message, he often just won't — or can't — do it. If McCain becomes the nominee and wins the White House, he will be 72 when he takes office, the oldest person ever to ascend to the presidency. He has suffered serious skin cancers over the years, not to mention brutal physical torture as a prisoner of war. His age and health, therefore, are of legitimate concern to voters. But McCain doesn't downplay his liabilities; he highlights them. "I'm older than dirt, with more scars than Frankenstein," he likes to joke.

McCain has what author and friend Michael Lewis once described as "a love of klix risk" that is "freakish" in a politician. Before the Michigan primary, he told voters in the economically ravaged state that lost auto-industry jobs "aren't coming back," a dose of undiluted straight talk that probably cemented his loss there to Romney. And no sooner had he arrived in Florida than he declared himself opposed to a costly national catastrophic-insurance bill that is widely backed by Sunshine State voters and supported by Florida's popular Republican governor, Charlie Crist, whose endorsement McCain covets.

Still, McCain's appeal tends to transcend his positions on the issues — when it doesn't contradict them entirely. He is the candidate most associated with supporting the President's war in Iraq, yet he is the hands-down choice so far of antiwar and anti-Bush voters in his party's primaries. He has accrued a far more conservative record in political office than Rudy Giuliani, Romney or, in many cases, Mike Huckabee, but he is, as he was in 2000, the favorite of independents and Democrats who choose to vote in GOP primaries.

That's the main reason that skeptical Republicans may fall in line behind McCain, even if they don't fall for him. This is shaping up to be a dismal election year for the GOP; regaining control of the House or Senate is beyond reach, and the incumbent Republican President has approval ratings that top out in the 30s. Home foreclosures are rampant, joblessness is up, and the markets are plunging. The Iraq war, while quieter, remains deeply unpopular. In other words, conditions could scarcely be worse for a Republican trying to win the White House. And yet every poll suggests that McCain — because of his appeal beyond his party — could actually win.

"McCain has his flaws," says Ken Duberstein, a former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan, "but everyone is starting to recognize that he's the most electable Republican out there." As if to dare Republican pooh-bahs to keep dragging their feet, McCain is holding a top-dollar fund raiser at a Washington steak house favored by lobbyists, on Jan. 28, the day before the Florida primary. The message: Get on board now, before McCain's nomination is a fait accompli.

If McCain does get the nod of his party, he has promised, he will wage a civil campaign. And he says he's confident that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will play by the same above-the-belt rules. Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are his colleagues, after all, and McCain has worked with each of them in the Senate. He once even bonded with Clinton over late-night vodka shots in Estonia on a congressional trip. "I am confident we'd have a respectful debate with any of the three," McCain says. "Why not? I've worked with them all. They're all patriots."

That's the kind of talk that strikes terror in the hearts of many Republicans and makes them worry that McCain might lack the fire to attack his Democratic rival or, if he won the White House, might abandon the bedrock values of the GOP in his zeal to make deals with Democrats. If McCain loses Florida, and the nomination, it will be because Republicans can't overcome their doubts about him — and because McCain isn't willing to make it easy for them.

[jeza u ledja]

Po najnovijim anketama na Floridi, koju je Giuliani proglasio najvaznijom drzavom za svoju kandidaturu, on ga plaho pusi, jer je tek na cetvrtom mjestu. Po anketama bitka se vodi izmedju McCaina koji bi imao oko 25-30% glasova, dok Romney dobija izmedju 20-25%. Huckabee i Giuliani su treci i cetvrti sa oko 15-20% glasova.

Podsjetimo Giuliani je do prije mjesec dana vodio u svim nacionalnim anketama za kandidata Republikanaca, medjutim odlucio se da preskoci kampanju u malim drzavama (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Wyoming, Nevada) i krene od Floride, pa na super tuesday. Na Floridi je valjda ocekivao glasove penzionera iz New Yorka. Potrosio je dole pravo malo bogatstvo, medjutim kada je u ostalim drzavama dobijao ispod 5% raja su ga polako pocela zaboravljati.

U Juznoj Karolini po anketama Obama ubjedljivo vodi ispred Clintonove (odnos 45% naspram 25%), cak sta vise neke ankete stavljaju Edwardsa (koji je dole rodjen) samo par boba iza Clintonove. Prajmariz u SC su prekosutra.

[poktapok]

Slate

The Case Against Hillary Clinton
Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?

By Christopher Hitchens

Gospodin Hitchens ocito nije ljubitelj gospodje Clinton. Gospodin novinar iznosi prljavstinu bivse predjsjednikovice i obavlja svoju duznost informisanja americkog glasackog tijela o vodecoj kandidatkinji na nacin sasvim dopusten i potreban toj amorfnoj publici. Medjutim, premda je pisac jasno dao do znanja protiv koga je, nije se u clanku udostojio citateljstvu pokazati kandidata o kojemu bi dao pozitivan sud. Naime, svi znaju da politicari lazu, pa bi red bio da saznamo koji laze najmanje. Ima li ga?

Po libertarijanskoj logici, Hitchens bi vjerovatno dao glas Ron Paulu. Paul nit' laze, nit' petlja, nit' je u svojih tridesetak godina sluzbovanja u kongresu na tiketu GOP-ja upao u ikakav skandal o kojem bi pisale novine Vanity Fair. Nije se Paul sigurno petljao ni sa problemom zdravstvenog osiguranja, jer Dr. Paul bi se oslonio na pro bono ljekare kao osnovu brige za zdravlje siromasnih. Bilo kakav drzavni sistem bi isao protiv svetog principa slobodnog trzista.

Mozda bi se, pak, gospodin novinar obradovao predsjednikovanju John McCaina. Heroj odbrane kapitalizma u Vijetnamu, borac za reformu imigracionog sistema dok irigacioni sistem pumpa Rio Grande, ponosni sin Jugozapada ispeglane koze i stisnutog lica, sigurno bi pasao nekome ko jedinu pohvalu gospodji Clinton daje zbog njenog glasa za napad na Irak.

Ne mislim da bi pohvalio sladunjavog Romneyja, kao ni presvetog Huckabeeja ili "radikalnog" Edwardsa. Pomislio bi mozda na Obamu, ali nakon toliko zajednickih snimaka Baracka i Hillary, sigurno mu se je zgadio. Osim toga, Obamine tirade o socijalnoj pravdi moraju zuljati pravedno situiranog Oxfordskog djaka.

Ali zasto bi se uposte autor knjige koja kaze da "religija truje sve" bavio americkim predsjednickim izborima? Listom svi kandidati su religiozni, a neki cak hitaju svoju religiju navuci na rukav. Da nije mozda gospodin Hitchins promasio zemlju? Liberalna sekularna demokratija (vise) ne zivi u SAD.

[jeza u ledja]

Mudro zboris.

Fakat, sta je ovaj 'Slate'?

[danas]

Mudro zboris.

Fakat, sta je ovaj 'Slate'?

ne sekiraj se, nema to u tvojoj mahali

americki izbori su odavno karikatura. vise 'izbora' imaju monarhije od ove ovakve 'demokratije'. o profiliranju kandidata bolje da i ne pocinjem. mada ne vidim zasto je ne bi trashirao na 'ovaj nacin' -- posebice kad i ona sama to radi svojim protivnicima... it is teh nature of the game...

a hitchens se ima jednako pravo 'baviti' izborima kao i mi ovdje... i naravno da su svi koji ga citaju (ako ga uopste i citaju) free da zakovrnu ocima na sve sto hitchens (ili bilo ko drugi) napise.. i ne shvatam, zasto bi morao biti -- za bilo koga? to je otprilike kao kad na izbore 1990-e izadju SDA, HDZ, i SDS i ja po ovoj logici ne smijem da napisem clanak u kojem trashiram radovana, i jos obavezno moram -- da sam za nekoga...

[jeza u ledja]

Mudro zboris.

Fakat, sta je ovaj 'Slate'?

ne sekiraj se, nema to u tvojoj mahali
.

phew, dobro smo prosli.

[pike]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHKG9wHCw4o



Pa ovi su gori od ovih nasih neznalica.

Jedan od mnogobrojnih razloga zasto normalan i inteligentan covjek nikada nebi trebao glasati za republikanca.

[pitt]

a hitchens ateista republikanac :D:D

[jeza u ledja]

Sve vise slusam prijedloge raznoraznih politickih komentatora o mogucnosti da NIJEDAN od trenutnih kandidata obje stranke u stvari na kraju ne bude izabran. Kazu ako se bude desilo da nijedan kandidat ne bude imao znacajnu bodovnu prednost do kraja proljeca, da ce na konvencijama na ljeto obje stranke mozda izletiti sa nekim sasma desetim. Kod Demokrata se spominje Al Gore (i dalje ), kod Republikanaca, ne znam ni ja, Tom DeLay? .

U sustini, tim wild card kandidatima odgovara ovakvo izjednaceno stanje.

Sto se tice danasnjih prajmariz u SC, po meni, ako navijate za Obamu, to sto se crnci okrecu njemu je veliki problem. Jer nekako to automatski znaci da ce se bijelci okrenuti Hillary. A njih je mnogo vise u SAD... Kazu u SC velika vecina bijelaca ce glasati izmedju Clinton i Edwardsa.

Neki dan je John Kerry i zvanicno podrzao Obamu u njegovoj kandidaturi, i napao Clintona (Billa) zbog njegove retorike. Negdje sam procitao da njega i Howard Dean podrzava, ali posto je sada sef stranke drzi se po strani.

[walkabout]

Zanimljiv scenario moguceg zapleta...

Evo sta se nama serviralo jutros...

------------------

Stephen Collinson Columbia, South Carolina
January 27, 2008

HILLARY CLINTON called for calm as she slugged out the last rounds of a race-tainted primary vote in South Carolina, where polls predicted Barack Obama would bounce back into contention for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton backers beseeched voters not to pick Senator Obama simply because he is the first African-American with a realistic shot at the presidency, arguing that their candidate's resume was superior.

"If all the black people in the world voted for the black people, where would we go?" local councilwoman Bernice Scott said as Senator Clinton opened her day at the chapel of a largely black college in Columbia.

"If all the white people in the world voted for the white people? Where would we go?"

But Senator Clinton urged Democrats to calm down, after each side accused the other of playing toxic racial politics.

"I think that there's been a lot that has been said on both sides and some of it has been, you know, kind of, generated and certainly stoked," she said. "That all needs to just calm down, and everybody needs to take a deep breath."

This weekend's first-in-the-south party-nominating showdown is the last battle in a single contested state, before the White House race goes national with nearly two dozen contests next week on Super Tuesday.

Senator Obama is hungry for victory after losing the previous two contests to the former first lady, but an unexpected defeat would probably deal a hammer blow to his hopes of taking her on on the national stage.

As Democrats eked out every last vote in the state, Republicans cranked up the pace of their sprint towards Tuesday's Florida primary, a make-or-break moment for the stuttering campaign of the former frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani.

But the former mayor of New York used a campaign debate to dismiss speculation he might fold his campaign if he went badly in Florida, where John McCain and Mitt Romney lead.

"I think we'll do very well in Florida and very well on February 5," he said.

Back in South Carolina, Senator Clinton was flanked by two giants of New York's African-American community, Congressman Charles Rangel and former mayor David Dinkins.

Like Senator Clinton, Senator Obama also planned an exhausting last-ditch swing across the state.

An MSNBC/McClatchy poll showed Senator Obama leading his rival by 38 per cent to 30 per cent in South Carolina, based largely on staunch backing from African-Americans.

But Senator Obama's standing among whites in the southern state plunged 10 per cent in a week, despite his efforts to portray himself as someone with cross-racial appeal