Iran, the Mirror of America.

My conclusion of the recent Iranian election is that it shows that the health and progress of Iranian democracy is on a par with USA democracy.

Beyond the foolishness of the fantasy of CIA involvement or the wishful thinking that the Iranian people are in the streets supporting some kind of "Islamic green revolution," the truth is that the Iranian people are demonstrating on their own behalf, not for revolution but for something much more basic to human society, and that is, the people primarily want honesty from their government leaders.

The Iranian Constitution is a document with democratic checks and balances that does allow for somewhat reasonably free elections. The demonstrators are not asking for a revolution or any other kind of fundamental change to the Constitution; they are asking that their Constitution be upheld and enforced. However, to the extent (1) that the Supreme Leader doesn't honestly exercise his role as a check and balance to the system, (2) that the Guardian Council doesn't exercise its role as a check and balance over the election process, and (3) that the Council of Experts doesn't exercise its role as a check and balance on the Supreme Leader, then these three bodies may by their failure to function effectively in the support of Iranian democracy then steer the people exactly in the direction of Constitutional change.

The election was patently fraudulent. The case itemizing the fraud doesn't need to be restated in depth. From the beginning when the results were announced within without any attempt to even pretend to give enough time to count the votes, from the way the counting process was changed to prevent the routine and legal observations, from the stuffing of ballot boxes up to 140% of the registered voters, etc. it is clear that the election result was a sham. By supporting the result with illogical argument and violent repression of the demonstrations, the Supreme Leader has shown that he is no better, and fundamentally no different than, the Shah when it comes to upholding the democratic principles of the Iranian Constitution. There are two bodies, the Guardian Council and the Council of Experts, that could provide checks and balances to the Supreme Leader's bias for the fraud, but they have so fa refused to act.

Now, let's be clear. The current situation is no better or worse than the situation in the USA in the elections of 2000 and 2004 which were both fraudulently stolen (albeit with more finesse) by George Bush. It does us no good to be on a high horse and look down on the people of Iran for having to live with a failure of their democracy. At least the people of Iran were demonstrating in the streets in large numbers. The people of the USA live with the failure of our democracy far more meekly by comparison. Our system of checks and balances failed and no one called for constitutional reform.

We have a system of Congressional legislation, Judicial review, and Presidential executive execution of the laws in which the Congress, the Justice system, and the Presidency are controlled by corporate elites every bit as much as the Iranian system is controlled by Islamic elites. We have a majority of the population that supports universal health care whether by a "public option" or by a Medicare-for-all (single payer) plan, yet neither the Congress nor the President has fought for what the public wants in the health care debate.

The people of the USA want the Clean Air act to be strengthened yet the Congress has just passed a phony clean energy bill that sells out to coal and nuclear energy and reduces the power of the Clean Air act. This is no fluke, it is the systemic failure of USA democracy that is accepted meekly by the majority of the public whose very preferences are ignored.

President Obama received his highest levels of campaign support from Wall Street interests, so is it any wonder that in the first six months of office that Obama has rewarded those same Wall Street interests with payoffs greater than any previous such looting of the US treasury in our history, all the while virtually ignoring the plight of the individual homeowners?

What we in the USA have in solidarity with out fellow humans in Iran is that we want honesty from our system of democracy. What we share in our systems is a fundamental lack of honesty by those people elected and appointed to run the system. I wish that we in the USA had the motivation to march in the streets in the numbers that they did in Iran to protest that lack of honesty. And if we did, I have no doubts that we would see the violence of the USA elites come out against the protesters every bit as much as it has in Iran, just has it has come out against the USA protesters at the Democratic and Republican Party conventions every year.

The bottom line is that we in the USA are in no position to brag that our democracy is any more vibrant or successful than the Iranian democracy, and when we look at the protests in Iran we can share in the dream of an honest upholding of the Constitution both in Iran and here as well.

Protest should mean not placating.

This is a response to the article "Obama Needs a Protest Movement" by Francis Fox Piven in The Nation (see below.)

Oh my, I am astonished. Frances Fox Piven says, "The astonishing election of 2008 is over. Whatever else the future holds, the unchallenged domination of American national government by big business and the political right has been broken."

What election is she talking about? While, for the time being only, government has been wrestled from the hold of the political right wing of the big business party, Obama and his centrist Democrat supporters are as equally dominated by the liberal wing of big business as the political right wing of big business ever dominated the Republicans. Otherwise, for just one example, Joseph Lieberman wouldn't still be chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and instead, there would be talk about the dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security.

If Piven's premise is true that the domination by big business was “unchallenged”, then it can only be true because the Democrats were the ones not challenging in Congress, There were plenty of challenges from outside government. Every indication of Obama's transition decision making so far shows that there will continue to be no challenge to those big business interests coming from the White House and Congress shows no signs of challenging bib business either.

Since Piven's whole article, and excellent history lesson, is really about the need to have a challenge to the continuing domination of American national government by big business, I wonder why she opens with such a patently false premise? In my view, such placating of Democratic centrists by massaging their egos and self-delusion when it comes to their being dominated by big business is exactly the problem we progressives have, not our solution. The bottom line is that if Obama needs a protest movement it is only because he doesn't want one, and that is the problem the American people have with the big business interests controlling Obama and Congress, whether they are called Democrats or Republicans.

Gregory Wonderwheel

----- Original Message -----
From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG
To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 5:30 PM
Subject: Obama needs a protest movement

Obama needs a protest movement
by Frances Fox Piven

The Nation - 11/15/08 this article appears in the Dec. 01, 2008 issue

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081201/piven

The astonishing election of 2008 is over. Whatever else the future holds, the unchallenged domination of American national government by big business and the political right has been broken. Even more amazing, Americans have elected an African-American as president. These facts alone are rightful cause for jubilation.

Naturally, people are making lists of what the new administration should do to begin to reverse the decades-long trends toward rising inequality, unrestrained corporate plunder, ecological disaster, military adventurism and constricted democracy. But if naming our favored policies is the main thing we do, we are headed for a terrible letdown. Let's face it: Barack Obama is not a visionary or even a movement leader. He became the nominee of the Democratic Party, and then went on to win the general election, because he is a skillful politician. That means he will calculate whom he has to conciliate and whom he can ignore in realms dominated by big-money contributors from Wall Street, powerful business lobbyists and a Congress that includes conservative Blue Dog and Wall Street-oriented Democrats. I don't say this to disparage Obama. It is simply the way it is, and if Obama was not the centrist and conciliator he is, he would not have come this far this fast, and he would not be the president-elect.

Still, the conditions that influence politicians can change. The promises and hopes generated by election campaigns sometimes help to raise hopes and set democratic forces in motion that break the grip of politics as usual. I don't mean that the Obama campaign operation is likely to be transformed into a continuing movement for reform. A campaign mobilization is almost surely too flimsy and too dependent on the candidate to generate the weighty pressures that can hold politicians accountable. Still, the soaring rhetoric of the campaign; the slogans like "We are the ones we have been waiting for"; the huge, young and enthusiastic crowds--all this generates hope, and hope fuels activism among people who otherwise accept politics as usual.

Sometimes, encouraged by electoral shifts and campaign promises, the ordinary people who are typically given short shrift in political calculation become volatile and unruly, impatient with the same old promises and ruses, and they refuse to cooperate in the institutional routines that depend on their cooperation. When that happens, their issues acquire a white-hot urgency, and politicians have to respond, because they are politicians. In other words, the disorder, stoppages and institutional breakdowns generated by this sort of collective action threaten politicians. These periods of mass defiance are unnerving, and many authoritative voices are even now pointing to the dangers of pushing the Obama administration too hard and too far. Yet these are also the moments when ordinary people enter into the political life of the country and authentic bottom-up reform becomes possible.

The parallels between the election of 2008 and the election of 1932 are often invoked, with good reason. It is not just that Obama's oratory is reminiscent of FDR's oratory, or that both men were brought into office as a result of big electoral shifts, or that both took power at a moment of economic catastrophe. All this is true, of course. But I want to make a different point: FDR became a great president because the mass protests among the unemployed, the aged, farmers and workers forced him to make choices he would otherwise have avoided. He did not set out to initiate big new policies. The Democratic platform of 1932 was not much different from that of 1924 or 1928. But the rise of protest movements forced the new president and the Democratic Congress to become bold reformers.

The movements of the 1930s were often set in motion by radical agitators--Communists, Socialists, Musteites-- but they were fueled by desperation and economic calamity. Unemployment demonstrations, usually (and often not without reason) labeled riots by the press, began in 1929 and 1930, as crowds assembled, raised demands for "bread or wages," and then marched on City Hall or local relief offices. In some places, "bread riots" broke out as crowds of the unemployed marched on storekeepers to demand food, or simply to take it.

In the big cities, mobs used strong-arm tactics to resist the rising numbers of evictions. In Harlem and on the Lower East Side, crowds numbering in the thousands gathered to restore evicted families to their homes. In Chicago, small groups of black activists marched through the streets of the ghetto to mobilize the large crowds that would reinstall evicted families. A rent riot there left three people dead and three policemen injured in August 1931, but Mayor Anton Cermak ordered a moratorium on evictions, and some of the rioters got work relief. Later, in the summer of 1932, Cermak told a House committee that if the federal government didn't send $150 million for relief immediately, it should be prepared to send troops later. Even in Mississippi, Governor Theodore Bilbo told an interviewer, "Folks are restless. Communism is gaining a foothold. Right here in Mississippi, some people are about ready to lead a mob. In fact, I'm getting a little pink myself." Meanwhile, also in the summer of 1932, farmers across the country armed themselves with pitchforks and clubs to prevent the delivery of farm products to markets where the price paid frequently did not cover the cost of production.

Notwithstanding the traditional and conservative platform of the Democratic Party, FDR's campaign in 1932 registered these disturbances in new promises to "build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put...faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid." Economic conditions worsened in the interim between the election and the inauguration, and the clamor for federal action became more strident. Within weeks, Roosevelt had submitted legislation to Congress for public works spending, massive emergency relief to be implemented by states and localities, agricultural assistance and an (ultimately unsuccessful) scheme for industrial recovery.

The unruly protests continued, and in many places they were crucial in pressuring reluctant state and local officials to implement the federally initiated aid programs. Then, beginning in 1933, industrial workers inspired by the rhetorical promises of the new administration began to demand the right to organize. By the mid-1930s, mass strikes were a threat to economic recovery and to the Democratic voting majorities that had put FDR in office. A pro-union labor policy was far from Roosevelt's mind when he took office in 1933. But by 1935, with strikes escalating and the election of 1936 approaching, he was ready to sign the National Labor Relations Act.

Obama's campaign speeches emphasized the theme of a unified America where divisions bred by race or party are no longer important. But America is, in fact, divided: by race, by party, by class. And these divisions will matter greatly as we grapple with the whirlwind of financial and economic crises, of prospective ecological calamity, of generational and political change, of widening fissures in the American empire. I, for one, do not have a blueprint for the future. Maybe we are truly on the cusp of a new world order, and maybe it will be a better, more humane order. In the meantime, however, our government will move on particular policies to confront the immediate crisis. Whether most Americans will have an effective voice in these policies will depend on whether we tap our usually hidden source of power, our ability to refuse to cooperate on the terms imposed from above.

Copyright c 2008 The Nation

[Frances Fox Piven is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently, of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America ].
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Wake Up America - Best Speech at the convention.

So far the best speech at the convention by far was by Dennis Kucinich. It will be very hard for Obama to top "Wake Up America!"

Considering that Kucinich was given only 5 minutes and not the 20 he deserved, I'd go so far as to say it was the best 5 minute political speech in my lifetime of 58 years.

The Obama campaign made a big mistake putting Kucinich in the sub-prime time slot. So far Obama is running a "safe" campaign just like Kerry in 2004, and so far the polls show that Obama may get the very same result.

Putting the inspiring Kucinich into sub-prime time, and giving the uninspiring corporate spokesman Warner the keynote address shows the low note that the Obama campaign is playing, and the note sounds pretty sour too.

The Obama campaign is micro-managing and controlling the convention just like Kerry did in 2004, and they are driving the party into the same ditch.

Betsy Rothstein at TheHill Opens her report with

Obama tightens grip on podium speeches
Written by Betsy Rothstein

DENVER — Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is tightening the reins on campaign speeches and stressing that speakers emphasize a rags-to-riches theme.

Members of Congress and others who have been asked to address the convention must have their speeches approved by the Obama campaign. In many cases, the speeches are drastically changed — to the point where the original speech is completely scrapped, Democratic sources say.

This kind of propaganda management of the convention drains the life out of it. It is no wonder that most of the speeches are so poor. The leadership of the Democratic Party needs to learn some day that its vitality is in the free voices of the people, not in the scripted advertising of political professionals. If Candidate Obama won't let the authentic voices of his own Party speak, people had better get prepared now for the same or worse treatment from President Obama. Folks, people don't change when they get to the White House, they become more tight in their control not less.

Rothstein also reports on the Obama tampering and censorship with Kucinich's speech:

Yet not every speech has been completely overhauled. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who was asked by Obama to speak about the economy, was scheduled to deliver his speech Tuesday afternoon. The Obama campaign struck just one line from his speech, which slammed the Republicans and the Bush administration, according to a Democratic source.

That line, addressing Republicans, read: “They’re asking for another four years — in a just world, they’d get 10 to 20.”

Too bad that was censored. I bet it would have brought the roof down.

Here's the YouTube video of Dennis' speech.

Here's the text from the Convention website (edited to what Dennis actually said.)

Dennis Kucinich, (OH-10)Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 04:35 PM

Hello Fellow Democrats. Are you ready for November?

This one's for you, Stephanie.

Fellow Democrats let's go to Election Day. It’s Election Day 2008, and we Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.

Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

Now, if there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international law. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.

We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.

Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs are being lost.

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration, they want to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Contrators, those war contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

Now, this administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. But they can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. Now they skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and they've allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

Wake up, America. Now, this is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, our water systems, our sewer systems, our ports. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.

Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America.

What Obama Needs To Learn From Progressives

.
[Cross Posted at dailykos.com ]

You can’t have a critical mass for change if you don’t have a mass of criticism about what needs to be changed.

In my recent daily post from Portside I received the recent essay at In These Times by Ken Brociner titled The American Left: What Progressives Can Learn from Obama

Brociner begins by saying,

One of the trademarks of Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been his commitment to a new style of politics. Last year, in answering a question about negative campaigning and ad hominem attacks on opponents, he said: "My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it is customarily played."

Here's my quick response as a reader's reply to Portside:

Re: The American Left: What Progressives Can Learn from Obama

As a radical progressive I got a good laugh from Ken Brociner's essay. Ken, you haven't presented anything that progressives can learn from Obama. Obama says "we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it is customarily played," and then he goes to AIPAC and plays the game completely customarily and his flip-flop cave-in on Telecom Imunity is completely customary politics, just to name two examples. Ken, in case you didn't notice, Petraeus did betray the USA, and Sirota is right that Obama is keeping hush on important issues. Ken, Obama is the best choice among what the two party machines have to offer, but after observing Obama's first two weeks as the nominee and his rush to the center, only uncritical admirers of Barack Obama can still believe he has a genuine desire to transcend old political habits.

Gregory Wonderwheel
Santa Rosa.

As you can see I'm not at all enamored by Barack Obama's candidacy. His speech at AIPAC the day after achieving the nomination was an abomination and supreme display of pandering at its worst. Self-styled progressives like Ken Brociner leave me wondering if there is a political label that Democratic centrists won't try to usurp?

So looking at Brociner's essay a little deeper, afer the first paragraph presented above, he goes on to praise Obama for running "an unusually fair-minded and positive campaign."

Next Brociner says,

Obama's commitment to a different brand of politics represents more than a mere preference for taking the high road in the rough-and-tumble world of political combat. The Illinois senator has, in fact, developed what amounts to an alternative philosophical outlook toward politics. And it is a perspective that, I believe, too many progressives have been ignoring at their own peril.

Unfortunately, Brociner then laspes back into discussing issues of political campaigning style and does not provide any examples of the "alternative philosophical outlook" that Obama is supposed to have developed. So it appears that this alternative philosophical outlook only extends to trying to be a "nice guy" campaigner.

The problem that progressives have with Obama is not as Broiner alleges that we don't trust his motivations, it is that we don't trust his politics. So far he appears to be nothing more than a better window dressing on the Democratic Party. Brociner wants us to believe that every political "enemy" be they vanilla liberal Democrat or rabid neo-con really sincerely believes "they are working to
make the world a better place." So? Perhaps Brociner's view is the problem. What ar ewe to make of people who believe they are working to make the world a better place but who are doing so in a manner that makes it worse? Okay, assuming George Bush and Dick Cheney really wanted to make the world a better place by lying to the public and illegally invading and occupying Iraq, how does that "new philosophy" help us?

Assuming that Barack Obama really wants to make the world a better place when he goes to AIPAC and kisses their shoes regurgitating their false talking points right back to them, while Israel contiues its illegal and inhumane appartheid occupation and blocade of Palestine, how does that express a new "philosophical outlook" in political policy or principles?

It is not progressives who have a one-dimensional analysis, it is Brociner who is presenting a cartoonish version of reality by erasing the facts from the picture. What is happening and why? Brociner cites a September 2005 essay by Obama sent to the Daily Kos blogs titled "Tone, Truth and the Democratic Party."

Brociner includes the following excerpt from Obama's appeal:

"...I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate."

That looks good on paper or the computer screen, but why then does Obama dumb down his political debate at every opportunity to do otherwise? Whe did Obama go to AIPAC and not mention that Israel's blocade of the movement of goods in and out of Palestine is a crime against humanity? Why doesn't Obama, who was a Constitutional law professor, use his new status as the leader of the Democratic Party to educate the electorate about the 4th Amenedment and why Telecom Imunity violates it, but instead he dumbs down the issue and falsely pretends that this bill is a compromise. That's not a new "philosophy" that's the same old stick up the rear that the American people have come to expect from politicians that leads to "a cynical electorate" that is anything but "selfish."

Obama is the one who is creating the dishonest tone to the election when he supports an assault on the Constitution and calls it a good deal for the people. The fundamental dishonesty to the Democratic Party is that Obama is conceding that he has no argument against the Republicans on national security. And on top of that Obama's basis message is even though George Bush has the power now, don't worry when Obama is president he will exercise it responsibility. That is not a new philosophy of government; that is the oldest political scam in the world. What Obama needs to learn from progressives is to quit the political con game and keep it real.

P.S. I recommend Glenn Greenwald's blog Obama's support for the FISA "compromise"

Scoring the Philidephpia ABC Democratic Debate 4/16/08

Q1: GIBSON: Something inane about their campaigns appealing to different constituencies in the party, then a Mario Cuomo statement asking for a pledge to choose the other as a running mate, "So I put the question to both of you, why not?"

Score: D for dumb question.

BHO: Talks about issues that are in the election and why supporters of both candidates will support the eventual nominee. Doesn't respond directly to the stupidity of the question as it relates to presidential primaries and the entire history of selecting vice presidential running mates.

Score: C, an politician's dodge.

GIBSON then turns to HRC changing the question and he recites a section of the Constitution that has already been amended out of the Constitution and also the passage cited doesn't even apply to primaries but to open election. That section was about an open election when the first place was president and the second place was vice president which resulted in a president and vice president of different parties. Gibson seems to misunderstand the Constitution and the entire history of party politics that caused the Constitution to be amended to take out this section. Then he asks "If it was good enough in colonial times why not in these times."

Score: F

HRC: Says she will do every thing to make sure one of them takes office in January. Still contesting who will be nominee. Pledges to be a good Democrat and has seen the damage of the Bush years. Still she doesn't address the actual vice president issue.

Score: C, a politician's dodge.



Q2: GIBSON: Asks Obamba about talking to a closed door fundraiser in San Francisco and saying that small town Pennsylvanians get bitter and cling to their guns or cling to their religion or to antipathy to people who are not like them. Gibson says Obama admitted he misspoke and mangled his words. Asks, "Do you understand that some people in this state find that patronizing and think that you said actually what you meant."

Score: C a fair question poorly stated.

BHO: Admits he "mangled" what he meant to say, and won't be the first or last time. Says he "meant to say" that people are going through difficult times right now and goes into economic hard times. He says when people feel the failed promises of Washington to respond to the hard times, then they politically focus on those things that are constant, like church, This is a place where they can find refuge in voting on things like guns which is something passed from generation to generation and this is important to them. "Wedge issues" take prominence in politics, and when those issues are exploited then important issues like health care, education and jobs are not solved.

Score: B-. good restatement of the issue of how fear affects voters.

HRC: says she is a granddaughter of factory worker in Scranton PA worked in lace mills at 11 years old active in Methodist church raising sons. She doesn't believe that her grandfather or other people she knows and met in PA cling to religion when Washington doesn't understand them. Says it is a fundamental misunderstanding. of the role of religion and faith and she doesn't believe people cling to traditions like guns when people are frustrated with the Government. She doesn't believe that's how people live their lives. Says she sees people are frustrated. And she says she sees how people could be offended by the remark suggesting that Obama is not being .respectful by making them. Talks about all the wonderful people she has met in PA and despite any frustration with government people are resilient and positive.
Score: C-. She picks on the one point of vulnerability on the word "cling" basically saying these people love their churches and guns all the time so clinging in hard times is not a real factor. IMHO: Actually clinging "more" is a factor that Obama is correct about, but Clinton is able to exploit the difficulty of the nuance. But worst is the smarmy pandering in the way she talks about her grandfather and pretends that there are no Republican gun tottin' Bible banging Republicans in Pennsylvania. They are all just wonderful people. By saying she is offended by the remark ahe hops on the right wing band wagon.

Q3: Stephanopolous: asys McCain campaign is calling this a "killer" issue. Question to HRC saying that she told Richardson that Obama can't win against McCain. "Yes or no question, do you think senator Obama can win against McCain or not?"

Score: D this is a gotch-ya question trying to paint Clinton in the corner with contradicting herself or sliming Obama saying he can't win, which then would slime herself. This is not about any issue before the people to decide which candidate to vote for.

HRC: We have to beat McCain and either Obama or her will make it happen. She says McCain "has a great American story to tell" and "served our Country with distinction" but he has the wrong ideas about America. Says her 16 years on the receiving end of what Republican party dishes out how important it is that we try to go after every single vote.

Score: C politician's dodge. Good statement about McCain having wrong ideas about America but avoided question.

Q3 follow-up STEPH: But can he win?

Score: A given a bad question to start with he gets an A for at least keeping with it to the yes or no answer.

HRC: "Yes, yes, yes" followed by "now I think I can do a better job, obviously. I am better able and better prepared"

Score: B

STEPH: To Obama, can Sen. Clinton win?

Score D. a dumb question repeated doesn't get any better.

BHO: Says absolutely, but he also thinks he's the better candidate. Obama then goes on to say Clinton has criticized him for being elitist and condescending to people of faith since he is a person of faith and has reached out to people of faith about how Democrats make an error with Democrats don't show up to speak to people of faith. And that gun owners support him. Says Clinton has taken one statement if not properly phrased and beaten it to death over the last few days and that's politics. Important to recognize it's not helping the person sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to pay the bills at the end of the month. He brings up the 1992 comment about baking cookies and people attacked her for being elitist. then says Clinton learned the wrong lesson form it by adopting the same tactics..

Score: B tries to get focus on bad questions about irrelevant issues. Could have been more direct with Steph and Gibson for asking about this.

HRC; Says her comments were about his remarks. (continued on next segment)



HRC: Continues saying that the people who heard the comments were offended. then goes on about her 35 years of proven record of results. Impowering people. etc.

Score: D. Says that people at the fundraiser were offended and implies again that she was too. She still either doesn't get it or she just wants to pander to these voters.

Q4. GIBSON: To Senator Obama about speech on race and Rev. Wright. Gibson refers to Obama's comment that he had not heard these kind of words from Wright before. Then says when Obama took back he invitation to Wright to come to come to campaign announcement that Wright said Obama acknowledged Wright could get rough. "What did you know about his statements that caused you to rescind that invitation and if you knew he got rough in sermons why did it take more than a year to publicly disassociate yourself from his remarks?"

Score: F. this is not anything more than a gotcha question trying to say Obama lied when he said he didn't know how his Pastor spoke. He's not even asking bout the content of Wright's words, but only about Obama's timing in disassociating from Wright.

BHO: Says he hadn't seen specific remarks that showed up on YouTube, only the remarks in Rolling Stone were the one's in mind when he asked Wright not to come to the announcement. He then comments that he has discussed this already. He again says he knew that Wright made controversial statements but not the kind that offended so many Americans. He said Wrights comments were objectionable. Goes on to say the reason of his success is because he is trying to bridge the divides and move beyond.

Score: D. He should have never given in to calling Wright's remarks objectionable. That's my bias and maybe Obama is right to take this strategy but I don't think so. Also Obama failed to challenge the question directly and acted like it was a valid question.

GIBSON: To Clinton about her saying she would not have stayed in Wright's church He says we have heard the inflammatory remarks and also hear testimony of the great things Wright has done, "Do you honestly believe that 8,000 people should have walked out on that church?"

Score: F. Again another terrible question. Sure Clinton was trying to pander with her comment about leaving the church but this is not a political question. It is a question not about the issues but about a comment she made about a non-issue. This is a debate with severely limited time constraints.

To be continued......

The Bitter Truth: Can Obama Tell It and Still Win?

I'm of a mixed mind about whether Obama is electable. Why? Because the more I like him, the more I realize it is because he is giving the voters the bitter truth that they don't want to know. If he becomes the messenger of truth, as he seems to want to be, then the myopic, parochial, and ostrich-like "in denial" American public, who are largely brainwashed by the Main Stream Media-government collaboration, will turn on and attack the messenger and continue to close their eyes to the truth.

Rev. Wright.
Not wearing a flag lapel pin.
Comments about bitter people in Pennsylvania.

All good messages of bitter truth that make me like Obama, but they are messages that Obama is being attacked for and feels he must apologize for.

If apologizing works then I'm wrong again and that's fine with me. But personally, I'd prefer to have him be the unashamed bearer of truth and go down in flames rather than being the apologizer who loses anyway.

To me, Obama is only making himself appear weak by apologizing for Rev Wright's words and apologizing for his own words on bitterness. I understand he is trying to dodge the bullets, so I can't fault him for attempting this tactic, but I fear that he will lose both ways: it won't work and in the process he will have sold his soul of truth.

Rev. Wright?

He was telling the truth to America just like Micah and the prophets of the Old Testament. What's wrong with that? It was nothing different than Martin Luther King Jr. preached. But who wants to listen to that truth. It's much easier to misrepresent the message and attack the misrepresentation than deal with the truth.

Micah 3
1And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment?

2Who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;

3Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.

4Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them: he will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings.

5Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.

6Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.

7Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded: yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God.

8But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the LORD, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.

9Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.

10They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

11The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.

12Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

How like Rev. Wright's words! Isn't America built on blood and iniquity? From the first wars by the pilgrims against the Native Americans, to slavery, to the present day with the illegal invasion of Iraq and the horrors of torture under Guantanamo and the Presidential policy of rendition, and to the next foul thing America does, who can deny we are not built on blood, iniquity, and injustice just as Rev. Wright preached?

If you don't like Rev. Wright's words, then you don't like the Old Testament, and you don't like to hear the bitter truth, and that's fine. But if you don't like Rev. Wright's words and you call yourself a Christian, then you are just a hypocrite.

No lapel flag pin??

Great! Why shouldn't he be proud that he is not a false patriot. I don't wear a flag lapel pin either. If everyone who doesn't wear a flag lapel pin voted for Obama it would be a landslide. I wear a blood donor lapel pin. I'd like to see Obama wear one of those, but I wouldn't vote for or against him on the basis that he does or doesn't wear one.

In his CD album "Eat The Rich", Peter Tracy sings in the song "I Want a President":

"I want a president who is patriotic
Who would never sacrifice out children needlessly
I want a president who is not psychotic"

I'd like to see Obama get down with that as a response to the flag pin questions.

Here's what Obama needs to stand up and say loud and proud:

Look, anyone who says not wearing a flag pin is unpatriotic is a false patriot, a phony patriot, a fake patriot. A true patriot knows that the love of country is found in the heart and demonstrated by actions, not shown by wearing it on the lapel or the sleeve.

"Bitter" words?

As someone who lives 45 miles from San Francisco, I didn't find any problem at all with Obama's comments there about the bitterness of people in Pennsylvania and how that feeds their gun-tottin’ mania and affects their church-goin' attitudes. He accurately stated how it looks from the West Coast.

No one likes criticism, but if the people of Pennsylvania don't like to see their reflection in the eyes of West Coasters or others, then maybe they are not dealing with a reality that they should be paying attention to. I'll criticise you and you criticise me and maybe we can learn from each other. The attitude in America that people can't criticise each other for real issues is killing our morality and ethics more than any thing else. Instead of talking about bitterness, we get the distraction of the mainstream media pundits criticizing Obama for daring to raise the question of bitterness in the first place, what may be causing or exacerbating it, and what to do about it.

People may deny that their conservatism is based largely in bitterness, but it is a fact. People don't deceive themselves with the falsehoods of a faith based evangelism like George W. Bush does unless there is a deep bitterness in their soul and their world view.

The joke "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" has a seed of truth in it, because conservatives are people who gennerally grew up being told by their parents and church that life is mugging them. The flip side that "a liberal is a conservative who has been caught doing wrong" also has a seed of truth in that none of us claims his or her civil rights more strenuously than the conservative who has gotten caught doing something illegal. (A variation on the theme is the conservative whose family member gets a disease and then overnight becomes converted to providing liberal funding for research to cure that disease.)

The only mistake that Obama made in his remarks was in tying the bitterness of gun-tottin' Bible bangers too closely to recent economic events and not to a world view that depends on holding onto personal bitterness and encouraging wide spread bitterness in how people approach the world, blaming everyone but themselves for their bitterness.

Can he win?

As I see it the political predicament that Obama has is that he wants to tell the bitter truth but he also wants to win. This is a pretty hopeless situation for a person whose campaign is based on hope.

The New Hampshire Polls Weren't Wrong, the Media Was

ABC's Gary Langer writes in The New Hampshire's Polling Fiasco : "There will be a serious, critical look at the final preelection polls in the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire; that is essential. It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong. We need to know why."

Sadly Mr. Langer's "look" doesn't seem very serious. I'd like to know why the Mainstream Media (MSM) as represented by ABC should be believed? I suggest that any allegation made by the MSM that the polls were wrong is suspect, because it was the MSM that reported on those polls wrongly. The MSM is now trying to cover its misreporting by claiming the polls were wrong. As I see it, the New Hampshire polls weren't wrong. It was just that the MSM didn't know how to read them.

Let's analyze rather than blindly follow the MSM's fictions.

The results of the election were:

Clinton 39%
Obama 37%
Edwards 17%
Richardson 5%
Kucinich 1%
(unassigned 1%)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#NH

The Real Clear Politics (RCP) pre-election polling averages had for 01/05/08 to 01/07/08 was:

Obama: 38.3
Clinton: 30.0
Edwards: 18.3
Richardson 5.7
(unassigned 7.7)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_primary-194.html

First, in the RCP polling average there is only one percentage number (Clinton's) out of four that is outside the expected margin of error. Obama's, Edwards' and Richardson's numbers were within a reasonable margin of error. So how is that, in Langer's words, either "simply unprecedented" or "so wrong"? It's not.

Next, how do the numbers in the RCP poll add up? 38.3+30.0+18.3+5.7= 92.3 leaving 7.7% unassigned going to either "undecided" or Kucinich or other candidates like write-ins.

Compared to the RCP poll averages, the results showed that Kucinich got 1% leaving 6.7% unaccounted for. Those 6.7 added to the poll's 30.0 for Hillary gives 36.7% for Clinton. Then add the 1.3 from Obama and 1.3 from Edwards and the 0.7 from Richardson's (all three amounts were within the margin of error but they went to Clinton) for 3.3 and then subtract the 1% not assigned and you have 30.0+6.7+3.3-1.0=39% which is the actual result for Clinton.

So, according to the averages, the polls weren't wrong at all for Obama and Edwards, it was only that of the 7.7% that was unaccounted for, most of it went to Clinton and none to Obama, Edwards, or Richardson. That is not a big mix up in the polls. It was the MSM reporters who jumped to a conclusion because they didn't know how to read the polls.

If the media had analyzed the polls correctly instead of trying to create flashy fireworks to report, they would not have focused on the number that gave Obama an apparent lead, but on the relatively large number of 6.7%undecideds. Had that large number of 6.7% been correctly reported there would have been speculation about which candidate would get it. Even if people speculated that it would all go to Obama, or be evenly distributed, the only surprise compared to the polling is that this number went all to Clinton.

A poll provides an abstract snapshot using numbers. Each number has a margin of error. Add to each number's margin of error the number of undecided and you have the reasonable range that the numbers of the poll must be considered to have. The MSM seems to have mistaken logic for probability by thinking it was not logical that an amount equal to the undecided would all go to Clinton. But just as a toss of a coin may come up heads seven times in a row, logic actually dictates that all the undecided voters may go to only one candidate.

So the number of undecideds must be added to each candidate's margin of error number to know what the possible swing is that is portrayed by the poll's snapshot. That is the "logic". Now, the probability is more unlikely than likely that the undecideds will all go to one candidate, but before an election that is not a question of logic. Before an election, logic dictates that even improbable but not impossible outcomes must be considered to be within the range of numbers that the poll is reporting.

But under no circumstances if the polling was read correctly, should the media have reported that this 6.7% was a lock for any of the candidates and it should have been reported that the 6.7% was the wild card that meant the election could go any direction. The media should not have reported "the polls predict Obama will win," but only, "this poll shows a likelihood of Obama winning but also it is possible within the margin of error and if the undecideds break for Clinton that Clinton could win." Then it is up to the audience to decide how probable or not the outcome based on the length of time between the poll and the election. By the same token, the polls did show that even if all the undecideds went to Edwards and his margin of error was considered, that he would not win. So on that score too, the polls were not wrong.

But because the MSM wanted a story, it created its own narrative of a big swing to Obama in the polls and totally ignored the 6.7% that was unaccounted for. By ignoring that 6.7% the media created the story instead of reporting it. The MSM should have reported that the polls showed Obama and Clinton in a close race to the finish and that due to the number of undecideds and the margin of error it was still too close to call.

Now, the media and pundits of the MSM are once again creating a story, this time that "the polls were wrong", when in fact it was not the polls that were wrong but only their mistaken interpretation of the polls.

As we have seen, it looks like most of the undecided voters and a few of the voters for each of the other candidates shifted to Clinton. By the way, I am not saying that in fact all the undecided voters went to Clinton. I am saying that any of the undecided voters who went to the other candidates can be accounted for by a shift from those candidates to Clinton that was well within both the general margin of error and the inherent uncertainty of polls due to considerations of the polled support being softer than harder.

Also, we must remember that there is no longer the length of time between Iowa and NH that there used to be. Thus the Iowa "bounce" for Obama was not able to be polled in a stable state. The MSM should have known the bounce was unstable and reported that any bounce toward Obama would, like a pendulum, necessarily have some amount of back swing. The question that the MSM didn't report is whether the polls that had swung so much in Obama's favor from Clinton would swing back any before the election.

The election showed that a completely reasonable number of people who had polled in the bounce for Obama, either came back to their pre-Iowa pro-Clinton feelings or had their soft support switch to Clinton. All this should have been considered in reading and reporting on the polls, but this is too complicated for the MSM which hates complications and must find a single simple story line that is no more complex than a slogan to sell to the masses as the view of reality.

Alternatively some pundits like Tim Russert are creating a story that the polls weren't wrong and instead the Clinton "victory" was stunning. This is just as mistaken and results in saying such absurdities as this.

"NBC's Tim Russert, subdued for most of the night, resumed some of his post-Iowa-caucus exuberance shortly after Clinton's victory speech. 'One of the greatest upsets in American political history. Underscored,' he said on MSNBC. 'This is the political equivalent of Ali-Frazier.'"
http://www.freepress.net/news/29421

No, Mr. Russert, this was not at all an upset, much less "one of the greatest upsets in American political history."

The polls said the race was close because there was an average 8.3% difference with 6.7% unaccounted. Clearly if the 6.7% went to Clinton then the result was statistically too close to call. That is actually what appears to have happened, so it was not a "greatest upset." Again, only by buying the crazy idea that the 6.7% should be ignored can someone like Russert believe that there was an upset or like Langer that the polling was unprecedented.

Lastly, let's look at the MSM fairytale that Clinton won New Hampshire.

In fact, New Hampshire was a tie. The MSM theme that Clinton was way behind was an illusory fraud, so the new theme that she is now a "comeback girl" is also a fraud.

Clinton was virtually tied in the Iowa results since she came in second place and only one delegate (out of 4,049) behind Obama (16 to 15), while Edwards was in third place in Iowa with 14 delegates (not counting superdelegates for any of them which Clinton has many more of). So with 15 delegates meaning she was only one delegate behind Obama's 16 and with a candidate needing 2025 delegates to win the nomination, the Iowa results did not put Clinton at all far behind Obama. One out of 2025 is not the "huge" win or the huge lead that the MSM and the Obama campaign made it out to be. Obama's campaign should never have allowed themselves to be sucked into that fairytale whirlwind.

In primaries, the actual difference in the number of votes doesn't count if the percentage is less than the percentile needed to win a delegate. Thus in New Hampshire, where the vote difference was not enough to award and extra delegate, the result between Clinton and Obama was a practical tie with 9 delegates each. The so-called 2% "stunning victory" in New Hampshire was an illusion since Clinton really needed about a 4.25% lead just to get one more delegate than Obama for a real win.

Since New Hampshire was an actual dead-heat tie for delegates between Obama and Clinton coming off a virtual tie in Iowa, there was no great "fall behind" and no "great upset" win for Clinton. Both angles on the Iowa-New Hampshire story are made up by the MSM and pundits like Russert and analysts like Langer create illusory sizzle out of the plain facts.

Who's Really Burning the Flag?

As a fan of The Young Turks, I peruse their website and today producer Jayar Jackson (nicknamed "The Reverend") posted a good blog titled Voyeristic Voting Leads to Presumed Patriotism.

Jayar was responding to the right-wing nuts who are criticizing Barack Obama for holding his hands in front of himself while listening to the National Anthem instead of having his hand over his heart. He conncected this latest outrageous attack of false patriotism to the previous attacks on Obama for not wearing an American flag lapel pin.

Logic should scream that Barack Obama shouldn't have to tell you that his grandfather taught him the Pledge of Allegiance when he was 2 years old. Common sense should prevail when you wonder if his missing American flag lapel pin allowed over 3,800 U.S. soldiers to be killed in Iraq on false pretenses. Questioning if he will restore habeas corpus, privacy, and civil rights to all American citizens, including ones that have sex in their own homes differently than him is a nice place to look first. Will the healthcare puzzle that many other countries figured out be solved? How about whether or not our troops that the Republican Party claims as their own will begin to be treated with the dignity, respect, and basic treatment that they deserve when/if they return home? Do our third world-like cities such as New Orleans have the capabilities to survive another Hurricane Katrina? Will it take over two more years of filth, disease, and random violence to begin to revive our lost city? What steps will he take to stop the terrorist-recruiting and anti-American practice of torture that yields false information? Is the candidate going to threaten another sovereign country with unprovoked attacks because of what their leader likes to say about others?

If you think the answers to these questions lie in his American flag pin, whether or not he places his hands on his chest, butt, crotch, or stomach during the national anthem, or if his name comically sounds similar to that of a Muslim, then have fun in your fantasy world called the Matrix. When you see an agent, run, Neo, run!

At the end of his blog, the first comment from reader named acroso notes, "Obama supports flag burning too." with the link to a 2006 statement why Obama supports legislation to make flag burning illegal but not a Constitutional Amendment.

"And when I became a Senator, I swore an oath to protect the Constitution. Under that oath, my first allegiance is not to a political party, or to an ideology, or to a president, or even to popular opinion, but to the Constitution and to the rule of law.

"The Framers made it difficult to amend the Constitution because our founding document should not be changed just because of political concerns or temporary problems. And even the strongest supporters of this amendment are hard-pressed to find more than a few instances of flag burning each year. Those problems were left to be solved through legislation, and I support legislation introduced by Senator Durbin that makes it illegal to burn the flag without changing the Constitution. The Constitution has only been amended 27 times. These amendments include guarantees of our most basic freedoms, the freedom of religion, the right to a trial by jury, the protection against cruel punishment."

After reading the statement of Obama in the light of Jayar's comments, I posted this response.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reverend Jayar, you can write. I hope this was written before Screen Writers Guild strike so the conservatives won't accuse you of being a scab.

If anyone, soldiers included, thinks that our soldiers are fighting a war to protect our flag, then they are greatly mistaken. The flag is a cloth symbol for our national fabric that is woven from the Constitution. It is the Constitution that needs protecting, not the flag.

Though Barack Obama says flag burning is a rare event, he is only talking of literal flags and flames. But in truth flag burning is a daily event. Today it is the conservatives and neo-cons who are "burning" the meaning of the flag every day at the very time they are holding it aloft, because they are waving the flag in order to tear out pages of the Constitution that they don't like, not to protect the Consitution and our AMerican freedoms. Every single neo-con and right-wing reactionary who wears a flag on his or her lapel is burning the flag with the flames of their false patiotism.

Here are some of my favorite quotes on the difference between true and false patriotism:


"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, Nuremberg Trials 1946
- from "Nuremberg Diary" by G M Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)


"There is an important difference between being patriotic and chauvinistic. The patriot places his country within the context of international conflicts; the chauvinist is a "vain country bumpkin" who believes that the world ends within his country's borders."
~ Marginal Notes on the Crime" by Celia Hart (August 25, 2004)

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." -~Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it "
--George Bernard Shaw

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
--Bertrand Russell

"A politician will do anything to keep his job even become a patriot."
--William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) US newspaper publisher, Recalled on his death 14 Aug 1951

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: Boswell's Life of Johnson

"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first."
~Author: Ambrose Bierce

"This heroism at command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism--how intensely I despise them!"
~Author: Albert Einstein

"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfils our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."
- Aldous Huxley

"Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties."
~Author: H.G. Wells (Herbert George Wells)
Source: Future in America

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."
- Clarence Darrow

Lastly, here's one to consider for the those false patriots who support the occupation of Iraq. It was said during the time of our Revolutionary War by an Englishman responding to questions from his fellow Lords about why the American insurgents continued to attack the English Redcoats:

"If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I never would lay down my arms,--never! never! never!"
~Author: William Pitt, Earl of Chatham
Source: in a speech 1777