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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
speaking from the view of pragmatic social democracy, the choice between obama and clinton is like choosing between buying from tv infomercials or buying goods of consistently dubious reputation from the local grocery.
i've not seen any political ads(which include everything in the media), but from the general echo of things, obama is first of all running on "change." change is one of these fawning-inducing words when used by a 'comrade.' to speak of 'change' is really the basics of any inspirational rhetoric; who wouldn't want to put into practice common ideals, or even to work toward them. however, it is also contentless by itself. insofar as a president seeks to do anything, 'change' can be used to describe the motivation. even if you seek to maintain the status quo, you could say, "oh hay dangerous changes are coming fast! we must change these dangerous trends(of change!)" really, if the political tide is already seen as progressive, the reaactionaries will see it as decadent, and of course you can run a platform of change with a reactionary if enough reactionaries are around. given the appeal obama has with 'independents' and moderate republicans, there is great cause for concern.
silliness, to put it mildly, is basic to the american political sensibility. really, someone like ron paul could appeal to american liberals is hilarious. but enough of that. i'll talk with some better informed people about obama and then make up an opinion about his actual substance.
the assumption of obama being a committed social democrat is unfounded. his 'change' seems more limited than real. to use idealistic rhetoric while having rather profane ideals is not all that great. it can only be accepted on pragmatic terms, as a stage in the movement of things. while we may indeed accept it on this term, we'll do so with due reserve and not much enthusiasm.
hillary, hillary, hillary. all the well known attributes of hillary are pretty much given. in a word, she is a machine. a pragmatic and iron handed politician is probably the best we could hope for, provided she works for the right causes. hillary is a good fighter, and even if she is not always effective, she deserves sympathy as a rooting interest.
however, 'clinton' is synonymous with sell out in certain circles, not without good reason. it might be a pragmatic and constrained move, but the neoliberal platform is a bit of a
but this superficial association is not enough, since hillary seems to have some concrete plans, something that has strategic reflection built into it. it is not enough to identify her ideologically, if one wish to chart the functional trajectory of her government. Instead, interpreting hillary is as much of a difficult task as trying to figure out the real expiration date on these made in peru canned fruit. it would be good to have a secret document titled "The Protocols of the Clinton Clan."
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Nader was just on Meet the Press, one of the things he had to say about 2000 was that his candidacy made Gore change his policy, which ended up in a net increase in votes.
He said that he should not be blamed, which I think I am forced to agree with. Before suggesting that 3rd parties should be shut out of politics forever, I think we should first address all of the underhanded factors in that election. If it weren't for such things we wouldn't be complaining about Nader right now.
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On February 25 2008 06:34 gwho wrote:
I don't care if obama hilary or mccain wins, because all three of them will continue the war for a very long time.
And even if they claim they want to stop it, they're still going to back out
Bull.
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I don't think McCain stands a chance against Obama anyway.
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Thanks for the article! Really interesting stuff. I have several problems with it though:
1. The authors are biased. On several occasions they make totally unsubstantiated statements. For example: "One might debate whether education should even be included as a core function of
government, because the private sector has shown itself quite capable of providing high-quality
education." Oh really? For people besides rich private school kids? For the most part the study is impartial, but the authors seem to be trying a bit to hard to defend their position and cut some analytical corners.
2. The paper proves correlation, but does not prove causation. Nations expand their government when they gain wealth. They also grow slower. So does bigger government slow growth? Or is it merely a byproduct of increased prosperity (relative to the rest of the world)?
For example, the paper mentions that "There are no OECD members in this group of fastest-growing economies."
But that is obviously because OECD members cannot increase their productivity as fast as developing nations and has nothing to do with government. So the paper doesn't really make its case.
I don't think McCain stands a chance against Obama anyway. qft
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Damn those bastards trying to mess with our two party politics.
Obama for change 2008!!! WOOO
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mccain has the upper hand, he will rip obama apart in foreign policy.
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he will rip obama apart in foreign policy.
Because If there's one thing that's popular in the US right now, it's the Iraq war.
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If the democrats will never ever be able to win another election because of a left wing third party candidate, then they will have to adjust to that and move more towards the views of the electorate.
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Nader's not actually going to get any votes lol, the democratic base is far too energized.
Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients.
But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development background to help the defendant.
The case offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win, an attitude captured in one of her favorite aphorisms: "Bloom where you're planted."
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In May 1975, Washington County prosecutor Mahlon Gibson called Rodham, who had taken over the law clinic months earlier, to tell her she'd been appointed to represent a hard-drinking factory worker named Thomas Alfred Taylor, who had requested a female attorney.
In her 2003 autobiography "Living History," Clinton writes that she initially balked at the assignment, but eventually secured a lenient plea deal for Taylor after a New York-based forensics expert she hired "cast doubt on the evidentiary value of semen and blood samples collected by the sheriff's office."
However, that account leaves out a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim, according to a Newsday examination of court and investigative files and interviews with witnesses, law enforcement officials and the victim.
Rodham, records show, questioned the sixth grader's honesty and claimed she had made false accusations in the past. She implied that the girl often fantasized and sought out "older men" like Taylor, according to a July 1975 affidavit signed "Hillary D. Rodham" in compact cursive.
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Rodham, legal and child welfare experts say, did nothing unethical by attacking the child's credibility - although they consider her defense of Taylor to be aggressive.
"She was vigorously advocating for her client. What she did was appropriate," said Andrew Schepard, director of Hofstra Law School's Center for Children, Families and the Law. "He was lucky to have her as a lawyer ... In terms of what's good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn't Hillary's problem."
The victim, now 46, told Newsday that she was raped by Taylor, denied that she wanted any relationship with him and blamed him for contributing to three decades of severe depression and other personal problems.
"It's not true, I never sought out older men - I was raped," the woman said in an interview in the fall. Newsday is withholding her name as the victim of a sex crime.
With all the anguish she'd felt over the case in the years since, there was one thing she never realized - that the lawyer for the man she reviles was none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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runnining in newsday today ( http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-usark245589997feb24,0,2934440,print.story )
What do you guys think?
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so, as a lawyer, Hillary Clinton did her job well? her job as a prosecutor or defense attorney was to help her clients, which she did. if i hired a lawyer, i would expect him or her to do everything possible to win, wouldn't you? and who's to say whether or not those people were credible witnesses or not. that article is obviously very biased against Hillary and, in my opinion, tactlessly tries to spin a successful career into something negative.
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well some would argue that its important for the president to be principled
(being principled is one of the universally recognized traits of leadership)
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the court case is 30 years old and i don't think it's that important.
doubting the credibility of a 6 year old hardly makes someone unprincipled
the constitution says everyone accused of crime is entitled to a lawyer and i would be more disgusted if that lawyer didn't do their best to win because that would undermine one of the fundamental doctrines surrounding crime/law and that would also make them pretty incompetent.
unrelated, but, an ability to act outside of your principals to make decisions that would benefit the country would be a more desirable trait.
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I think she did her job and I am fine with that. Even though I think the tactics she used weren't correct.
Like others have said that article's goal seems to slam Hilary and her record on being a "immoral" person in her job and seems to be pretty biased. The one thing that the article talks around is how Hilary is representing her record and I believe that this should be the issue here. If she is touting how she did this and fought for that; but the record doesn't show it then she is *gasp* lying. The article doesn't do a great job of connecting what she has said about her record to what she did, or didn't, do. Thus the article has no real purpose in the Democratic primary discourse, imo.
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United States42967 Posts
On February 25 2008 15:54 fusionsdf wrote:
well some would argue that its important for the president to be principled
(being principled is one of the universally recognized traits of leadership)
She chose the right to a fair trial. That should be sacred. To give him anything less than her absolute best would be to personally sentence him without any judicial accountability. What she did was commendable, to defend a guilty man to the best of your ability simply because of his right to a fair trial is perhaps the hardest thing we can ask of any lawyer.
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On February 25 2008 08:27 Servolisk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2008 06:34 gwho wrote:
I don't care if obama hilary or mccain wins, because all three of them will continue the war for a very long time.
And even if they claim they want to stop it, they're still going to back out Bull.
Mccain and Hillary would definitely be there as long as possible, obama would probably pull out a little sooner (but not immediately).
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On February 25 2008 17:29 fight_or_flight wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2008 08:27 Servolisk wrote:On February 25 2008 06:34 gwho wrote:
I don't care if obama hilary or mccain wins, because all three of them will continue the war for a very long time.
And even if they claim they want to stop it, they're still going to back out Bull. Mccain and Hillary would definitely be there as long as possible, obama would probably pull out a little sooner (but not immediately).
Obama's plan is a immediate withdrawal completing in 16 months. Not exactly sure when Hillary's is proposed to be completed, but it is probably close. I find no reason not to take Obama on his word on this matter, it is a idea consistent with his history. Not the case for Hillary, but I still believe she would withdraw.
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On February 25 2008 17:16 Kwark wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2008 15:54 fusionsdf wrote:
well some would argue that its important for the president to be principled
(being principled is one of the universally recognized traits of leadership) She chose the right to a fair trial. That should be sacred. To give him anything less than her absolute best would be to personally sentence him without any judicial accountability. What she did was commendable, to defend a guilty man to the best of your ability simply because of his right to a fair trial is perhaps the hardest thing we can ask of any lawyer.
I wouldn't be sure about "fair". Was it fair on the raped child? This is horrible.
Guilty men should be defended by lawyers to the best of their ability... but to use unethical means? There has to be a line somewhere... I think she should of done her best with the real facts of the case, not try to expertly attack a traumatized child and make her seem like a liar.
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EPT
