There Was A Democratic Debate Today
If you don’t listen to NPR you probably didn’t know that, but here’s the Main Page with links to listen to the event sponsored by NPR and Iowa Public Radio, and here’s the transcript.
There were three on-air topics, Iran, trade, and immigrations, and the economy was addressed after the broadcast portion finished. No “gotcha” or “boxer or briefs / diamonds or pearls” questions, just the candidates talking about the topics.
Governor Bill Richardson was not there; he was attending a funeral.
4 comments
the little kerfuffle over the iranian national guard makes me want to vote for gravel now [not that i’m going to]. he points that they’re elected entities, so why shouldn’t the iranian national guard support hamas and hezbollah?
I think the NIE hurts Clinton on the vote on Kyl-Lieberman, which I was already ticked off about, and John McKay and I could both go off on what Gravel was for Alaska, even though he wasn’t a crook like the current delegation.
As for his point on Hamas and Hezbollah, they are local political parties and social services networks that have military/police wings, and are, from their point of view, in a struggle with occupiers. I don’t buy that 100%, but it is a reasonable claim.
If the Hedgemony had spent the last seven years working on a real solution between Israel and its neighbors, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
I think Iran stopped putzing around after it was disclosed they had been shopping at Dr. Khan’s “We R Nukes” yard sales. That brought in the IAEA and more inspections.
We really need some sane people in charge. China is already saying it isn’t interested in more sanctions after reading the NIE, and I don’t doubt Russia will do the same thing after Putin has another round of “the US is the new Nazi threat to the world” speeches. They have drawers full of them at the Kremlin.
if the contest came down to ron paul on their side and mike gravel on ours, then i like mike. beyond that… wellllll… i like the guy but i’m not sure i’d vote for him. [an aside, i do kind of like the idea of a kucinich/gravel ticket. at this point not a crook is looking awfully good.]
i dunno on kyl-lieberman. i think her vote might have helped clinton with the moderately-right-ish self-styled centrists. both clinton and obama seem to be reaching out to that sector [barf].
that hamas/hezbollah see themselves in a struggle with their israeli occupiers strikes me as eminently reasonble. i’m less certain of how duly-elected they are or how representative of the palestinians at large they may be.
if the hedgemony had spent the last seven years working on a real solution between Israel and its neighbors, we’d still be in this mess. the war profiteering is working out quite well for them, and keeping the mideast in turmoil helps keep our oil out of chinese and [india] indian gas tanks.
sane people in charge, that would be nice.
Gravel isn’t in the Paul league for crazy, but your vote would be vital in a Paul-Gravel match-up because almost no one would vote in that election.
There aren’t enough “centrist” votes in the country win an election in Walton County or Century.
The elections in the occupied territories were monitored, and the fact that Hamas was totally surprised by the result tends to make me believe they were fair. The Lebanese elections are by their nature unfair. There are many more Shi’ites in Lebanon than their representation in parliament would suggest, but the government has quotas for each ethnic group. Hezbollah probably received more votes than any other party in Lebanon, but the constitution won’t allow them to take control of the government. Democracy is a relative thing in the Middle East.
Oh, I think Iraq would still have happened, but overall terrorism would be down. The Israeli-Palestinian problem is, was, and always will be the root cause.