Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

That's the greatest video since John Cornyn's 2008 Senate reelection video.
 
Well homophobia seems to become rather strong in Africa or it just gets more scrutiny in the media. Uganda apparently wants to make homosexuality a capital offence.
 
Whatever her politics may be, Nikki Haley is friggin' hot.
 
If everyone was able to view every issue in moderation, seeing the points that each side makes, then decisions could be made without so much ideological bickering from those that see things as clearly "this" or "that". Every issue is has more than one meaning. Each side is not completely this or completely that. If we can come to a happy medium, everyone will be more happy.
 
So I went to vote yesterday and I used the democratic guide (after reading about each of the candidates and the propositions - because even the demos get it wrong sometimes).

I go to vote and there are extra candidates I didn't know anything about.

So I used my droid to get some info on them. One guy was Craig Candelore.

The search result for him was

"We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values," said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who is one of the group's candidates. "Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary."

And I immediately voted for the other dude.
 
Looks like that pidgeon poop of a two-faced bastard Geert Wilders won't get the biggest share of the votes in the upcomming Dutch election.

Good.

It would be an unspeakable shame if that shitbag of an excuse for a human being got any real power.

Freedom Party.. heh.
 
You are aware that the election was on wednesday right? He is the third largest party with 24 seats in the parliament (with 86% of the votes counted). A right coalition is possible at the moment, they would get 76 seats of 150, but then things can still change. I don't see Wilders as part of the next government, but he scored an amazing victory.
 
Whatever her politics may be, Nikki Haley is friggin' hot.

Too bad she's a "fucking raghead".

What an ignorant jackass.


Yeah she is pretty hot.

I would go hiking on the Appalachian trail with her. *boom*

That last guy on the Daily Show is so obviously lying and probably gay it is not even funny.

You know that little clip from the daily show is the first time I have heard that the guy called body Haley and Obama "ragheads."

The worst I had heard before was that it was fucking "ragheads"
 
You are aware that the election was on wednesday right? He is the third largest party with 24 seats in the parliament (with 86% of the votes counted). A right coalition is possible at the moment, they would get 76 seats of 150, but then things can still change. I don't see Wilders as part of the next government, but he scored an amazing victory.

But nowhere near what was projected in some early polls. Being punched in the face is better than being stabbed in the guts.
 
Well they were leading in the polls in week 27 of 2009 together with the Christian Democrats, which was a good year ago, since then they have never had a first place in the polls. Interesting is that Wilders seemed a lot more moderate and considerate last night than before, hinting strongly that he wants his party to join the government which is annoying as he stands quite far left on a number of issues.
 
Yeah, kinda makes him looks like a nationalist and a socialist.

Oh, snap, did I just say that?

My bad, I retract my statement, your Honor.
 
Oh South Carolina you never fail to provide us with entertaining political miscreancy.


WASHINGTON ? For a few hours this week, it looked as if South Carolina might ditch its never-fail reputation for political scandal in favor of a genuine history-making event.

There was Nikki Haley, a lawmaker of Indian descent, beaming on election night with her husband and children after taking a major step toward becoming the first female governor of the state. It was a feel-good image to obscure the stain of a campaign marked by ethnic slurs, accusations of marital infidelity and yet more national marveling over how a single state can produce a string of political embarrassments as long as the Appalachian Trail.

But then, the television cameras started rolling on Alvin Greene?s overgrown lawn.

?Yeah, it?s been pretty nonstop for a few days,? said Mr. Greene, 32, in a phone interview Friday.

Because everyone wants to know how Mr. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who had been completely unknown until Tuesday, inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state?s Democratic nominee for the Senate ? and the state?s latest political circus act.

Mr. Greene had just a few peaceful hours to savor his victory in the tiny, ramshackle home he shares with his elderly father along a quiet highway in Manning, where he has been bunkered since election night. Then, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Greene was arrested in November and is facing a felony obscenity charge; he is accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. He had been discharged ?involuntarily? from the Army and showed no signs of having waged an actual campaign in recent months ? no advertising, no staff, no money.

Mr. Greene, who declined to comment on the obscenity charge, would not say how he came up with the $10,440 to register his candidacy. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the House majority whip, suggested that Mr. Greene was a ?Republican plant? and that the circumstance reeked of the ?shenanigans? that have become the state?s trademark.

?We have embarrassment fatigue here,? said Dick Harpootlian, the former Democratic chairman of the state. ?If there is an embarrassment equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder, South Carolina has it.?

Even casual observers across the country can recite the recent litany of Palmetto State political antics. The Republican donnybrook between John McCain and George W. Bush in 2000 left more scars than any presidential primary campaign in recent memory. Gov. Mark Sanford?s public swoon over an Argentinean mistress ? an affair he carried on while claiming to have been hiking the Appalachian Trail ? remains a spigot of late-night punch lines (while Mr. Sanford remains the state?s governor).

The Republican primary campaign to succeed Mr. Sanford featured two operatives claiming to have had extramarital affairs with Ms. Haley (who strenuously denied the accusations) as well as a Republican state senator dismissing her with an ethnic slur.

Now comes Mr. Greene, adding Democratic balance to the state?s Republican-dominated scandal sheets of recent vintage. Mr. Clyburn immediately called for someone to investigate Mr. Greene?s candidacy ? who paid for the campaign, who was behind it, how did he ever win?

Mr. Harpootlian, a former district attorney, wants to know why Mr. Greene had not filed any papers with the Federal Election Commission, and Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina, said he suspected that someone tampered with the voting machines.

?There is something genuinely mysterious about this whole thing,? said Mr. Fowler, whose wife, Carol, the current chairwoman of the state?s Democratic Party, has called for Mr. Greene to step aside.

Mr. Greene said he had no intention of doing so. He said the whole gambit has been his idea, that he paid the entry fee and that his was ? and remains ? ?a self-managed campaign.? He said he would challenge his Republican opponent, Senator Jim DeMint, to a debate in September. ?It will be one hour. Live. On a major network,? he proposed.

Mr. Greene said he was determined to go through with this, which would seem to belie the somewhat shell-shocked demeanor he has projected in several interviews over the last 72 hours. ?Can I end this?? Mr. Greene asked in the middle of a brief interview with a local television station in front of his house Wednesday. It might as well be his campaign?s official motto, or wish, at least as far as leading Democrats are concerned.

?Sad,? Mr. Clyburn said, referring to the spectacle that Mr. Greene has become on the cable and YouTube circuits.

Even in Manning, a town of 4,000 where everybody knows everybody, nobody seems to know Alvin Greene. ?He just all of a sudden shows up and ? boom!? said L. G. Mathis, 61, the owner of L. G.?s Cut and Style, a barber shop downtown.

It is another embarrassment for South Carolina, said Carl F. Jackson Jr, a graphic designer at a local newspaper, The Clarendon Citizen. ?Anybody who got beyond eighth grade is a little astounded by this,? Mr. Jackson said, adding his own theory of how Mr. Greene had won. ?Maybe voters thought it was the singer, Al Green.?

When asked in a phone interview Friday whether he was having ?fun,? Mr. Greene quickly answered yes, before asking for clarification.

?What do you mean by fun??

Without waiting for an answer, Mr. Greene said he was not interested in ?fun,? or signing autographs (which he has yet to do) or indulging any of the trappings of his unlikely celebrity. He is interested in sticking to the issues that are important ? jobs, education, justice ? and to conveying why he is ?the best candidate for the United States Senate in South Carolina.?

Before elaborating on why he was, Mr. Greene excused himself, saying that he had to finish another interview.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Manning, S.C.

Now I was kind of suspicious of someone going to all the trouble of putting a plant in a primary but apparently it has happened before.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127747650

BLOCK: Do you believe that there is also something more nefarious going on here? The South Carolina congressman, James Clyburn, has said he thinks shenanigans were at play, that Greene was somebody's plant. He said it just doesn't add up that an unemployed guy paid $10,000, the registration fee, to run for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. HARPOOTLIAN: Well, I mean, we've had this happen before. The most graphic example, when I was the district attorney in 1992, I prosecuted a Republican operative who used campaign money from his sister's campaign for lieutenant governor to pay the filing fee for an unemployed African-American shrimp fisherman out on bond for selling cocaine, to run against Arthur Ravenel, the congressman in Charleston. The idea that if Ravenel had an African-American run against him in a Republican primary down there, it would increase the turnout in that area, which would help this guy's sister, who was from down there.

Of course, it didn't. It was a stupid thing to do. I prosecuted her brother and convicted him.

BLOCK: Well, that happened in the past. Is there any sign that that has happened this time around?

Mr. HARPOOTLIAN: Well, I mean, we got some tell-tale signs here that raise questions. One is this guy is out on bond. I've learned today that he has been appointed a public defender, which means back in November, when he was arrested, he filled out an affidavit of indigency, saying I don't have any money. I can't afford a lawyer. Yet in March, he comes up with $10,400 to file for the United States Senate.

I mean, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong there. I'm just saying that raises a question. And my sources indicate to me that the DA is going to have this man brought into court and find out if he can afford $10,000 to file for office, why can't he find $10,000 to hire a lawyer rather than relying on the taxpayers to provide one?


Also I have seen a couple of stories of voting irregularities in certain districts where Green got more votes then were actually cast. There were also problems with election day ballots vs. absentee ballots.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38433.html


hile Ludwig cautioned that the campaign is not jumping to any conclusions, he said the experts, who volunteered their services, have already uncovered some ?curious? findings in the election data.

One potential red flag: A significant difference between the results of absentee and election day ballots.

According to Ludwig, of the state?s 46 counties, half have a disparity of greater than 10 percentage points between the absentee and election day ballots.

?The election day ballots all favor Mr. Greene. We don?t know what it means,? Ludwig said in an interview. ?We did significantly better on absentees than Election Day, which is according to the mathematicians, quite significant. The other reason is, it didn?t happen in any other races on the ballot.?

In Lancaster County, Rawl won absentee ballots over Greene by a staggering 84 percent to 16 percent margin; but Greene easily led among Election Day voters by 17 percentage points.

In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.

?In only two of 88 precincts, do the number of votes Greene got plus the number we got equal the total cast,? Ludwig said.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38433.html#ixzz0nmA7NZKq
 
Whether or not Greene is a legitimate candidate, there is no doubt there was something seriously wrong with the election itself. Rawls has filed a formal appeal though, so hopefully this will get sorted out. At the very least I think there should be another vote.
 
It's possible they disliked Rawls so much, they just wanted to vote for anyone else.

I find it mostly weird Greene could get on the SC democratic ballot but not Stephen Colbert.
 
It's possible they disliked Rawls so much, they just wanted to vote for anyone else.

I find it mostly weird Greene could get on the SC democratic ballot but not Stephen Colbert.
Yeah, they disliked Rawls so much that more people voted against him than actually lived in most districts! :p

The SC Democratic leadership argued that Colbert would make a mockery of politics. Seems to me they do that pretty well themselves. I wish he could've gotten in.
 
Sarah Palin is at it again.... (Norwegian news story)

She says to Bill O'Reilly that the American Government should have accepted offers of help and advice from nations like Norway, who are good at handling spills, cleaning water, and building dikes apparently. Norwegian authorities on the other hand confirms that American authorities contacted right after the accident and asked for advice and what sort of equipment that could be used. Adding to that, she says that the evil Obama administration does not want this cleaned up, but use this crisis to increase his evil taxes...

Palin for president, 2012... :thumbsup:
 
She says to Bill O'Reilly that the American Government should have accepted offers of help and advice from nations like Norway, who are good at handling spills, cleaning water, and building dikes apparently. Norwegian authorities on the other hand confirms that American authorities contacted right after the accident and asked for advice and what sort of equipment that could be used. Adding to that, she says that the evil Obama administration does not want this cleaned up, but use this crisis to increase his evil taxes...

Palin for president, 2012... :thumbsup:
What are your dikes like over there?

It's a shame people listen to anything Palin says.
 
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