We wanted to bring democracy to Iraq and we’ve done so.  Sadly, we’ve brought much of our own democratic failings as a society of voters with us.

Just over half of Iraq’s 15 million registered voters cast ballots in weekend provincial elections, with turnout as low as 40% in at least one province, but Iraqi and international officials insisted Sunday that they were satisfied with the participation.

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker characterized the turnout as “large” and Iraq’s top election official called it “the most important election to take place since the fall” of Saddam Hussein. However, turnout failed to reach the 73% predicted by a recent government poll of 4,570 Iraqis.

What accounts for the low turn out?

• Distrust of the Candidates
• Confusion over redistricting
• Lack of feeling that each vote really counts

Sound familiar?  It should, it’s the reason our country usually gives for low voter turn out.  So, I guess we’ve done well in bringing some of our values over to Iraq.  But that’s alright, on the plus side, it was viewed as a safe and secure day of voting, not to mention that there were very few complaints of fraud committed during the voting process.

So it’s not all bad news.  If anything, it’s more like indifferent news.  So, yay for that.

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to actively contribute here on the site for numerous reasons. I’ve been incredibly busy with non-online based activities, but also (like many others I’m sure) I’m just completely worn out by politics.

The ridiculous games of back and forth sniping and false claims by both parties are mind-numbingly spirit crushing.  I’m tired of the Republicans pandering to narrow minded, racist, beer guzzling, anti-intellectuals and calling them the working class “real Americans”.  I’m tired of the Democrats thinking the working class are all narrow minded, racist, beer guzzling, anti-intellectuals.  I’m tired of all the “Joes” whos last name aren’t Biden- and he only gets a pass because he’s actually in the race, and quite possibly the only person who seems qualified enough to be there.

Obama, hey, listen up- McCain has made no statements claiming to cut Medicare to pay for his health care plan, so stop trying to scare the old folks in Florida.

McCain, your turn- Obama has nothing to do with ACORN, and ACORN has not committed “voter fraud”.  What happened is that a handful of $8 an hour employees of ACORN who get paid for getting unregistered voters to register, filled out forms with fake information so they could keep their jobs and not have to work.  And when I say handful, I mean a number I could count on my hands.

Obama- When you say that McCain wants to give tax breaks to “Big Oil”, you should probably include that those tax breaks are going to all major companies that make the same amount of money as “Big Oil”.  He’s not picking and choosing, he loves all big money companies the same.

McCain- Your favorite plumber (mine’s Mario, can Joe rescue a princess?  I think not…) would get a tax break under Obama’s tax plan.  Unfortunately neither of you candidates seem to be able to accurately put your tax plans into words when called upon, and you both actively distort each other’s plans.  Quit confusing the poor folks (by poor I mean, the people being led around by the nose by politicians who couldn’t find their asshole in the dark, not poor as in financially… though, yeah- quit confusing them too!).

And just so we can get it straight- here is (once again) the tax plan break down for each candidate:

• If you earn up to $18,725 a year you would get a $65 tax cut from McCain, and a $567 cut from Obama.
• If you make between $37,000 and $66,000 you would get $608 under McCain’s plan and $1,118 from Obama’s plan.
• If you’re making between $66,000 and $110,00, McCain would give you $1,487 less in taxes, while Obama would give $1,264.
• And here’s the big one, are you ready Joe?  If you’re raking in between $680,000 and $2.8 million you would get a $109,214 tax break from McCain, but would pay $121,689 under Obama’s plan.

Joe, if you’re making over a half mil in profits (yes, I’m taking AFTER expenses and such) as a plumber then sign me up and hand me a plunger.

Palin- For the love of god, just shut the fuck up.  Other than being good for a laugh, you’re a wretched public figure who plays to all the worst base instincts of humanity, and for all the attention that’s given you’d think the ticket was Palin/Wurzelbacher ticket instead of McCain/Palin and you’re costing your party dearly.

Palin- Keep talking, your wonderful hatemongering and understated equating of Obama with 9-11 style terrorists make a majority of the American public (the non-racist, ignorant, hate group registered majority) really uncomfortable and will likely lose the election for your party if you continue at this pace.

The election just can’t get here fast enough to be done with all the speculation and concern over what one candidate might do as opposed to the other, and we can just get to the point and someone can hopefully start steering this sinking ship towards land.  We have enough problems in this country right now that we don’t need petty party politics pushing blame on each other and lying outright about each other’s role in it.  We need to get on with just fixing things.

Of course, I’m not fool enough to think that even after the elections that things will change in that respect, but one can hope.

What’s that saying? You know…. the one that you say when something happens that you thought would never happen? Oh yeah!

(Hijab veiled) pigs are flying!

The Foreign Ministry recently received a letter through its Arabic-language website from an Iraqi author and researcher asking to express his enthusiastic support for the Israeli minister.

“I pray to God that Minister Livni becomes Israel’s prime minister, and then the world in general and the Middle East in particular would be better off,” wrote the author, whose name has not been revealed.

“The minister’s knowledge and diplomatic wisdom are a guarantee that she can lead the State of Israel to rule the world. These, alongside her dedication and modesty, are skills for sensible leadership,” the letter said.

Lead the State of Israel to rule the world?  uhh…  can we get a translation check on that one?  Or, a reality check?

Current Israeli PM Olmert recently announced his resignation last week and Minister Livni has his job in sight.

The Libertarian Party announced their Presidential nominee on Sunday, and it’s not the suspected Ron Paul that much of the public had thought it would be- he held that title 20 years ago.  No, this time around it’s Bob Barr, a former congressman from Georgia, and one time Republican. 

The Libertarians have said that this could make for the strongest ticket they’ve had in the history of the party (37 years) but that’s not really saying much, as they tend to make up only 3% of the entire voting landscape.

That said- there are some grumblings that with  a race that could be close between McCain on the Republican side, and (let’s just go ahead with saying it) Obama on the Democrat side, Barr could have the position that Green Party Candidate Ralph Nader had in the 2000 elections.  The common view being that had Nader not run, the votes that went to him could’ve gone to Al Gore instead, and put him into the White House as opposed to current President George W. Bush.

Only this time, it wouldn’t be votes taken from the Dems, but from the Reps.  Will Barr make a difference in the coming Presidential Election?  Conventional wisdom would have to say it’s less than likely, but then again… who knows?

Hillary took a 10 point lead over Obama in Pennsylvania last night, showing Obama still has trouble connecting with the middle class- especially in a place where the Clintons have strong roots and connections to local politicians.

But it’s not enough for Hillary to overcome the lead in votes that Obama has nationwide, and unless something impossibly catastrophic should happen to Obama in the near future, there’s virtually no chance that she will ever be able to make up that difference.

So with the race continuing on further still, and each Democratic Candidate throwing knockout style punches at each other with neither going down for the count, it will get only uglier still until something or someone puts a stop to it.

With the super-delegates still waiting in the wings to make their final decisions, will they side with Hillary who just refuses to die and who plays largely to the usual Dem base, or will they side with Obama and all the unusual votes he carries with him- hoping the base will fall in place behind any candidate come November- so long as it’s not a Republican?

And speaking of Republicans, what is John McCain up to while the Dems go tooth and claw?

…McCain, who compared the struggles of Youngstown to his own back-from-the-dead campaign, insisted that in the end workers would be better off through retraining and education programs in technology he has promised them as president.

“I can’t tell you that these jobs are ever going to come back to this magnificent part of the country,” Mr. McCain told another questioner, Sam Carbon, a student at Youngstown State, who asked Mr. McCain about how he planned to save American jobs. “But I will commit to giving these workers a second chance. They need it, they deserve it. I know that’s small comfort to you, but I can’t look you in the eye and tell you those steel mills are coming back.”

Mr. McCain, who was on the second day of a weeklong tour to the country’s “forgotten places” while his two Democratic competitors battled for the nomination in Pennsylvania, sought to strike an empathetic note in the midst of his sober message.

“I’ve been left recently in the unfamiliar position of facing no opposition within my own party,” Mr. McCain said in remarks before he took questions at the public forum, which was held at the university. “And as you might recall, it was a different story last year, when I could claim the unqualified support of Cindy and my mother — and my mom was starting to keep her options open.” (Cindy is Mr. McCain’s wife.)

“Back then,” Mr. McCain continued, “there were some very impressive front-runners, there was a very formidable second tier of contenders, and then there was me.”

Despite being written off as “a hopeless cause,” Mr. McCain said, “a person learns along the way that if you hold on, if you don’t quit no matter what the odds, sometimes life will surprise you. Sometimes you get a second chance, and opportunity turns back your way. And when it does, we are stronger and readier because of all that we had to overcome.”

Mr. McCain added: “I bring up all this today, my friends, because the men and women of Youngstown know what it feels like to be counted out. You’ve been written off a few times yourselves, in the competition of the market. You know how it feels to hear that good things are happening in the American economy — they’re just not happening to you.”

Afterward, Mr. Carbon, a Republican, said that Mr. McCain’s answer had partly satisfied him, and that he would vote for him in November. He said he understood that manufacturing jobs would not return, but “I was looking for more about his views on tariffs and taxes on imported things.”

McCain’s vote for, and continued support of NAFTA, which is a program many in places like Youngstown hold responsible for the loss of American working class jobs in the first place, left many bitter, and some believe was a cause for him losing primaries to Mitt Romney who spoke out for change of NAFTA in areas that had been hit hard by the loss of factory jobs. But with talk of re-education and replacement jobs for those workers, he may win some of those folks back.

Of course… education is not exactly something America is excelling at, at this very moment- something no Candidate is really talking about.

And it’s no surprise, they wind up looking quite foolish.
Last night on WWE’s wrestling program Raw, the candidates had been invited, and accepted the offer, to appear on the show and address the audience as part of WWE’s “Smackdown your vote” campaign, and in a last ditch bid for a few more votes in the candidate’s media blitz the night before the biggest of the remaining primary elections.

I don’t think there’s much I can say that showing the clips themselves won’t say better.

And then to make it all the more ridiculous- WWE went ahead and scheduled a match between “Hillary Clinton” w/ “Bill” and “Barack Obama”.

Admittedly… the Bill impersonator was pretty funny.

Barack Obama made some remarks last Sunday highlighting his frustrations with his failure to connect with the white middle American working class- that in turn made it even harder for him to connect with the white middle American working class.  Go figure.

At issue are comments Obama made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

”It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The comments, posted on the Huffington Post political Web site Friday, set off a storm of criticism from Clinton, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain and other GOP officials. It threatened to highlight an Obama weakness — the image that the Harvard-trained lawyer is arrogant and aloof.

Of course the Obama camp went into damage control mode to attempt to defuse the flare-up, and put a little more context to his words.

”I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” he said at Ball State University.

There has been a small ”political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter,” Obama said Saturday morning at a town hall-style meeting at the university. ”They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they’re going through.”

”So I said, well you know, when you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country.”

After acknowledging his previous remarks in California could have been better phrased, he added:

”The truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important. That’s what sustains us. But what is absolutely true is that people don’t feel like they are being listened to.

”And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives, and what we need is a government that is actually paying attention.

Of course, he still with these comments misses the fact that most of these people hold faith in these same principles and hold the same beliefs in these topics- even when the chips aren’t down.

Hillary Clinton never one to shy away from an opening to show how much she is part of whatever target audience she’s after at the time saw this as an opportunity not only to highlight her opponent’s weakness in this event, but also to show once again, how much she is “one of the people”.

”I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies,” she said. ”Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it’s a matter of personal faith.”

”I grew up in a churchgoing family …,” she continued. ”The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich …

”I also disagree with Senator Obama’s assertion that people in this country ‘cling to guns’ and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration,” she said.

”People don’t need a president who looks down on them,” she said. ”They need a president who stands up for them.”

Of course, Clinton’s claims to mid-western normalcy ring about as true to some as her accounts of being fired upon while travelling to Bosnia (never happened, in case anyone forgot).  And with that in mind, Vice President Dick Cheney has stepped up to the podium and issued a challenge for Hillary to meet him out in the woods and have a “hunt-off”.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Vice President Dick Cheney said that a hunting contest between him and the New York senator was “the only way” to determine whether Sen. Clinton’s tales of her gun prowess were for real.

“To be frank, Hillary Clinton’s stories about her adventures with guns don’t exactly pass the smell test,” the vice president told host Tim Russert. “If she really wants to show that she knows how to handle a rifle, there’s an easy way to do that: meet me in the woods.”

While some in the Clinton campaign expressed concern about their candidate accepting Mr. Cheney’s challenge, the idea of a hunting contest got the ringing endorsement of one member of her inner circle, former president Bill Clinton.

“Dick Cheney and Hillary in the woods with guns?” President Clinton said at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. “Boy, I like the sound of that.”

But shortly after the vice president issued his challenge, Sen. Clinton seemed to back off from her earlier claims of hunting experience, saying that she had “misspoke” about her hunting exploits as a child.

“I fired a gun once, but I didn’t like it, and I didn’t recoil,” she said.

This is probably a wise challenge for her to avoid, as anyone who recalls Cheney’s hunting prowess figures this is just an excuse for him to shoot her in the face.