Your opinions, comments.
Here's mine-
I was REALLY impressed with Dennis Kucinich. He was right on target, IMHO. He said we're in Iraq for oil.
I like Richardson, but don't feel he did that well - rambled.
Joe Biden had a good showing - concise, forceful.
I like Obama, don't feel he did well - non-specific.
Dodd spoke well, said some good things, he just seems too sterotypical politician to me.
Gravel spoke truth, he showed his age, unfortunately.
Hillary - well, was Hillary. I could not vote for her, but if you like her, you got more of the usual.
I was astounded she said "We're safer now than 9/11, but not as safe as we should be".
Overall - I liked that health care got a lot of attention, but would like more emphasis on care, not just health INSURANCE - the insurance is part of the problem - they health insurance companies should be charged with fraud.
I did not like that I think only 2 hands - I think Gravel & Kucinich - were raised for "English as the official language". Hillary claimed that making English "official" would preclude things like having ballots in other languages?!?!?! WHAY owuld ballots be in other languages. I Googled naturalization and found a requirement "The ability to read, write and speak English".
I found the transcript:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/us/politics/03demsdebate_transcript.html?pagewanted=27&_r=1
US Marine vet Vietnam 4/68 - 8/69 5th District, NJ
Frankly, I don't buy a word of it. These are the scions of their party and what they say is all about getting elected not about what they will do.
What they will do is obvious, they will cater to the powerbrokers to keep their own powerbase, increase their influence and fatten their bank accounts.
correct GEA
Do a little research - when Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland, he bankrupted the city. Scary.
Here's another version of "bankrupted Cleveland":
"Having been elected to Cleveland's City Council at age 23, Dennis J. Kucinich was well-known to Cleveland residents when they chose him as their mayor in 1977 at the age of 31. At the time, Kucinich was the youngest person ever elected to lead a major American city.
In 1978, Cleveland's banks demanded that he sell the city's 70 year-old municipally-owned electric system to its private competitor (in which the banks had a financial interest) as a precondition of extending credit to city government.
When Mayor Kucinich refused to sell Muny Light, the banks took the unprecedented step of refusing to roll over the city’s debt, as is customary. Instead, they pushed the city into default. It turned out the banks were thoroughly interlocked with the private utility, CEI, which would have acquired monopoly status by taking over Muny Light. Five of the six banks held almost 1.8 million shares of CEI stock; of the 11 directors of CEI, eight were also directors of four of the six banks involved.
By holding to his promise and putting principle above politics, Kucinich lost his re-election bid and his political career was temporarily derailed. But today, Kucinich stands vindicated for having confronted the Enron of his day, and for saving the municipal power company. "There is little debate," wrote Cleveland Magazine in May 1996, "over the value of Muny Light today. Now Cleveland Public Power, it is a proven asset to the city that between 1985 and 1995 saved its customers $195,148,520 over what they would have paid CEI."
In any case, it was 30 years ago.
US Marine vet Vietnam 4/68 - 8/69 5th District, NJ
However, having left Cleveland not all that long ago, and having been a customer of CPP and having to deal with its many outages and long delays in restoring service, I still associate the two. I do promise to listen to what he has to say, and will try my best not to let my bias influence what I hear.
It doesn't say he ran the power company, just that he didn't sell it.
Anywhere that gets thunderstorms/ice storms has too many power outages that last too long... I know I get them in NJ and got them in NY....
Read this from a BBC reporter - compares Kucinich & Ron Paul - I agree completely with the reporter...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6725393.stm
US Marine vet Vietnam 4/68 - 8/69 5th District, NJ
thats a good rag paper, get lots of honest no spin news from that paper. whew!
Maybe you need to go the Red State.com that is where what is left of the far right that believes all the neocon propaganda meets.
Do you ever have anything to contibute?
For your education - BBC= British Broadcasting Corporation. It's an outsider's view of American politics.
I you want spin in a paper, get the Washington Times (not the Post). Sun Yung Moon owns it and he's spinning his head off.
US Marine vet Vietnam 4/68 - 8/69 5th District, NJ
he cant run a medium sized city without bankrupting it but he wants to run America. yea right!
Critics are quick to charge that Kucinich "led Cleveland into bankruptcy" as a young (31) mayor, called "Dennis the Menace" by the press, and his administration was certainly messy. One book recently named him as the 7th worst mayor of American history, not for any reasons of corruption or scandal, but due to his "abrasive, intemperate, and chaotic administration." He survived a recall vote after only ten months in office by 231 votes (out of 120,000) and was voted out after one term by Republican George Voinovich, even through Democrats outnumbered Republicans 8 to 1. When he threw out the first pitch at a Cleveland Indians game, he wore a bullet-proof vest and had sharpshooters positioned on the stadium roof.
Kucinich has made a dizzying switch on abortion with no apparent principle to back it up (other than, "I want to win some Democratic primaries.")
As a Congressman, he amassed one of the most anti-abortion voting records in Congress, one especially unusual for a Democrat. Fair enough, Kucinich was raised Catholic. He voted to criminalize partial birth abortions, to deny American servicewoman the right even to pay for their own abortions overseas, to prevent Washington, D.C. from funding abortions for poor women with nonfederal dollars, against research on RU-486, even against health coverage of basic contraception for federal employees. In 1996 he told Planned Parenthood that he did not support the substance of Roe v. Wade. He received a a 95 percent position rating from the National Right to Life Committee, versus 10 percent from Planned Parenthood and 0 percent from NARAL.
Now that he wants to run as a progressive Democrat though, he is waffling all over that stance. He told The Nation magazine that "I believe life begins at conception and that it doesn't end at birth." (Huh?) He said he was not in favor of either a Human Life Amendment that would constitutionally protect "life" from the moment of conception, nor the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and presented his votes as votes not against abortion per se but against federal funding of the procedure. That's not consistent with his votes on the servicewomen and Washington DC issues mentioned above, however. And while told The Nation he was not in favor of "criminalizing" abortion, he voted for a partial-birth-abortion ban that included fines and up to two years in jail for doctors who performed them, except to save the woman's life.
When pressed, Kucinich said "I haven't been a leader on this. These are issues I would not have chosen to bring up." Well, he has been at least a devoted follower of the anti-abortion position, until it became politically inconvenient. And if he's not a leader, why should anyone elect him as president?