Tag Archive for 'Clinton'
For the life of me I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and we’d never compromise
For the life of me I cannot believe we’d ever die for these sins
We were merely freshmen
We’ve tried to wash our hands of all of this
We never talk of our lacking relationships
And how we’re guilt stricken sobbing with our heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we’d say
I can’t be held responsible
“The Freshman” by The Verve Pipe
In the fall of 1998, I matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania. During the welcome weekend for freshmen, then-President Judith Rodin addressed the incoming class. She cited the lyrics of The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshman” imploring that we remember that we are not MERELY freshmen, but active members of the community, and as such we are to hold the highest standards in all that we do, because each of us represents our school in that moment and for the rest of our lives. (At least that’s how I remember it. . .) We don’t get a pass but are to be held accountable for our actions.
I’ve been following the recent news that senior Bush officials (VP Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, then-CIA Director Tenet, John Ashcroft, and Donald Rumsfeld) were not only aware of torture, but were active in planning and regulating these acts committed against various persons of interest in terrorism investigations. Here is ABC’s piece on their 5-month investigation:
The two-thumbs up for torture goes all the way to the Oval Office because in a follow up interview with G.W., he matter-of-factly supported their efforts.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
Last fall, NYTimes columnist Frank Rich wrote about the apathy of the American people who have silently looked the other way while the Bush Administration violated international laws using rendition and torture to interrogate suspects, when they weren’t busy stripping Americans of their civil liberties.
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Now that we know that government officials participated in planning waterboarding and equally perverse forms of interrogation, we must hold them accountable and send message that illegal conduct of this nature and flagrant mendacity will not be tolerated.
Tonight after the latest Democratic Party Debate, TrueMajority.org, Brave New Films, US Action , and Democracy for America took the first shot with the Condi Must Go commercial. The full spot is here, and you’ll see an abbreviated version on television.
As of writing this post, more than 33,000 people have signed the petition demanding that all three Presidential candidates ask Condoleezza Rice to resign her post as Secretary of State. As a first step, you too can join the effort and spread the word.
What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.
So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.
McCain will likely be less sympathethic to such a petition. When asked by a journalist if we are better than torture (in general), he responded
I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act… And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.
Non-Americans, that’s another story.
I’ve unfortunately not been able to find any Clinton commentary as of yet. (Please leave some links in the comments section if you find them first)
What about you? Are our elected officials above the law? or are you ready to hold them responsible?
Best spoof I’ve seen in a while; I laughed out loud. What do you think?
PS. This video popped up on Perez Hilton’s site on 4/2; looks like I scooped him!
Earlier this month, G.L. Hoffman of Boomer-blog What Would Dad Say (AKA WWDS) invited me to post regarding the events which will be attributed to shaping Gen Y. I’ve been kicking around ideas for several weeks. . . I am ready to respond.
The Events of 9/11
Ask any Boomer where they were the day Kennedy was shot, and you’ll hear an interesting story. Every one remembers the mundane details of their lives on a day that stung a generation.
For the older half of Gen Y, 9/11 is a similar experience. Each twenty something I know has a story. The father of a friend who quit his job at the Trade Center, after 20 years with a company, just weeks before the attack. Everyone in his professional inner circle for 20 years, dead. The guy whose fire fighter brother died running into the very same building thousands ran out of. The young woman who recalls watching the plumes of smoke in NYC from a NJ overpass, not 10 minutes from my family’s home.
I spent July thru December 2001 at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Due to the time zones I was 12 hours ahead and was already home in my TV-less apartment when the attacks occurred. On September 12th, I woke to a one-line e-mail from a college friend in Philadelphia. “The United States is falling down.” ?!?!
I headed to the nearest news stand to see newspaper after newspaper covered with graphic photographs of the towers aflame, the jumpers desperate to escape a firey death and images of the second plane crashing. There was no way I could go to class that day; instead, I spent the morning and afternoon in a Thresherman’s Bakery just past the edge of campus, where I watched commercial-free coverage of the attacks on their wide-screen television. The same footage looped over and over again, with little additional breaking news. The pictorial was broken by British and Australian citizens expressing their sympathies and commenting, “if it can happen in America. . .” My only break from the tv screen was an emergency meeting called for the roughly 500 Americans studying at the University of Melbourne; at least one student needed to get back to the States because a family member was missing.
In the days and weeks to follow, hundreds of well-wishers left flowers and other tokens at an impromtu memorial in front of the American embassy there. Every Australian who heard my accent wanted to know if I was from the NY area and was my family ok. Despite being from NJ, I was fortunate in that I had no personal losses on that day; other members of my home town community were not so lucky.
I spent time in the library digging through dusty books on American foreign policy to figure out who Osama Bin Laden was and why he’d promised retribution as far back as 1992. (To this day, it frustrates me to hear politicians parrot that terrorists are afraid of our freedom, because that attack was an act meant to draw attention to arrogant foreign policy that frequently ignores that cultures of other nations. It was a horrific, yet effective way of getting our attention.)
On January 1, 2002, my welcome home brought me to an airport teeming with armed military personnel and the realization that the 9/11 attack was just the beginning.
The Ubiquity of Technology
Earlier this year I attended a conference on college marketing. Ricky Van Veen, twenty something founder of CollegeHumor.com remarked that “We’re the first generation to use the Internet before we had sex.” The remark drew the intended laughs, but stop to think about that reality.
Today, children learn to use a computer before they learn to write their name. Cellphones, video games, PDAs, computers, downloads, social networks, wireless Internet access: all are an integral part of the world Gen Y is growing up in. For teenagers, the loss of a cellphone is akin to the loss of a limb; they are ever connected to their social circles. Technology makes us available 24/7; in turn, information and entertainment have joined the realm of instant gratification.
It’ll likely be years before we can truly evaluate the effects of a lifetime of technology that isolates us at the same time it brings us all together.
Election Season 2008
Youth involvement in politics has rebounded something fierce for this latest Presidential Election season. Young adults are turning out in record numbers across the nation, and are actively campaigning. Barrack Obama is frequently credited with the invigoration of Democratic youth, while Ron Paul was actually quite popular with young Republicans online. YouTube and MySpace joined the ranks of acceptable debate venues (again with technology), evidence that the political arena is embracing our demographic.
No matter who wins, I don’t expect young adults to fall back into life as usual. We’ve had a taste of what unity and activism can do. Democratic candidate Obama is inspiring us to believe change can start at the bottom and shift power. (Has anyone not seen the Yes We Can video put together by young entertainment professionals that went viral and was embraced by the Obama campaign? 5 years ago that kind of grassroots campaigning was just not possible.) Clinton has shown a woman can run just as fierce a campaign as any man.
Regardless of who takes earns the Presidency in the fall, Obama, Clinton, and McCain would each experience the youth movement in different ways. Gen Y found its voice this election season.
Beyond these trends and landmark event, I think we’ve yet to see what will define our Generation, a Generation with a profound sense of social responsibility and a Generation who does not accept “impossible” as a valid word in our dictionary. Yes, We Can.
Disclaimer: If you read my blog, you’ll find that I support Barrack Obama.
It’s fair to expect that candidates (and their staff) should demonstrate fiscal responsibility in handling campaign finances. We have a $9+ trillion federal debt and counting that the next president will need to tackle. And yet, Hillary can’t help but stay in the red.
It seems she owes everybody money.
The Politico.com website reported that if she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills and not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have had less than $2 million available for this month. Mr Obama would still have had $31 million cash-in-hand even if he had paid off the $625,000 owed to creditors.
Mrs Clinton’s biggest debts are to her pollsters, strategists and advertising consultants. She also has hundreds of outstanding bills for catering, security, printing and hiring venues. By the end of February, her campaign had not, for instance, reimbursed the Hy-Vee chain for making thousands of sandwiches on the night of the Iowa caucuses.
Her professional team hasn’t been doing a very good job of developing a winning campaign if her recent ratings are anything to go by, so I accept stiffing them. But the hundreds of small business owners that you want voting for you in the primaries and general election, maybe it’s not so good to spite them. Or like delegates from sparsely populated states, in Clinton’s mind small business owners don’t count?
In more ironic news, mandatory universal health care proponent Clinton hasn’t been paying the fees for her staff’s insurance lately.
But the unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.
They show the campaign ended last year owing Aetna more than $213,000 for “employee benefits.”
During the first two months of the year, the campaign did not pay down any of that debt. In fact, it accrued another $16,000 in unpaid bills last month, and it finished the month owing Aetna $229,000.
I realize money is tight, but any bills related to one of her defining platforms, should probably take priority. Otherwise it looks as though she holds herself to a separate standard than she wants every other American to abide by.
While I’d like to hold out hope that Clinton will get her finances in order in April, it seems more likely that her team will continue to overlook the cracks in the foundation her Presidential bid is built on.
Update 9:16pm: Went to a networking party this evening and chatted about this issue with a forensic accountant who was born in Persia. He feels I should give Clinton the benefit of the doubt. She’s playing to win, and in the end all of her debts will be paid. It’s part of American culture to believe that if you build it, people will come. For Clinton, she’s spending extravagantly to score the nomination. He also noted that her husband is basically her collateral; she’s a good risk because Bill’s earning power means she can make good on the money she owes either way.
Your thoughts?
I’m starting to wish I owned a working TV, so that I can watch Olbermann nightly. I’m amazed that any reporter had the stones to speak out regarding the Clinton campaign strategy and Ferraro’s racism. Olbermann represents what journalism should be.
A blogger at Mother Jones posted this Clinton campaign apology parody today. In the event you don’t visit that site regularly, I wanted to share.
My sophomore year of high school, one of my teachers asked our English class who our role models were; who did we admire? I got mocked for along time for saying Hillary Clinton, but at the time I believed she was breaking class ceilings and proving women had what it takes to be political leaders — even if her attempt at a universal health care plan failed. Now I regret ever respecting her at all.
Today she stated,”I think you’ll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say. He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”
Great leaders lead with their constituents in mind; one could even call on utilitariansim. If you’re a Democratic candidate your goal is to take the Democratic Party to an election win, whether it’s you or the other candidate. Especially if you’re purporting to support the future and not Bush 2.0.
The fact that she’s willing to hop in bed with a Republican, while the Democratic primaries are still going on, is incredibly disappointing. It’s further proof that she’s petty, self-absorbed, and has no regard for the long term consequences, as long as she achieves a short term gain. She’s opting to distance herself from Obama at the expense of the Democratic party.
I hope she and McCain run together, so Obama can whoop them both come November.
Some discussion is brewing that while Obama could go into the convention with more delegates than Clinton, Clinton could take the nomination through unpledged super delegates.
Why do Americans allow anyone to have the right to choose a candidate that is potentially contrary to what the popular vote has already decided?
Given the rising swell of support behind Obama, Clinton would only further alienate the Democratic party if she takes that nomination should it come her way under the above scenario. On countless blogs, I’ve seen commenter after commenter say, “I’m a Democrat, and I’d vote for McCain before Hillary.” No doubt there’s a reasonable pool of people that are on the fence and would be pushed to McCain following a public outcry if Clinton gets handed the nomination.
Should the this scenario unfold, Clinton should be leader enough to drop out. The Democrats needs this win. . .a nation $9 trillion in the hole needs this win. If Clinton is truly about doing what’s best for the American people, she wouldn’t take the nomination. (King Solomon’s tale, anyone?)
Since I think she’s a shady character, snowball’s chance in hell of her doing so.
“Why are white men allowed to look at the issues and judge for themselves and the rest of us are expected to take sides grade school style? That is racist and sexist and dumb. That is like if all the stupid people voted for Huckabee (please God let this not happen).”
so sayeth Margaret Cho, blogging on the Huffington Post re: America’s Next Top President
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