Powerfulated.
-New Hampshire Delegate

>> ^doremifa:
He skirts from comical to angry and I have had a difficult time taking this guy seriously when he intends to be.

I'm a fan of Olbermann's, but I have to agree that the massive shifts in tone during his show seem jarring. One minute he's joking around, the next he's serious as a heart attack. They used to always have celebrity news in the hour, and that was so incongruous with the rest of the show that it just came across as being distasteful, and I'm glad they've finally dropped that entirely.

I also have to say I was a bit puzzled how Olbermann would turn a sub-30 second soundbite into an 11-minute special comment. Something about this really got him angry -- I've watched most of his special comments, and I'd swear he was more angry in this one than he'd ever been before.

As someone who's watched the show for a long time, I'll also say that I'm pretty sure Olbermann started the primary season as a big fan of Hillary Clinton. I can tell you exactly when that changed: when she teared up before the New Hampshire primary, and then immediately launched into an attack on Obama.

Starting from that very episode, he stopped being mostly neutral in the primary, to being very heavily anti-Clinton, and when Edwards dropped out just a couple weeks later, very pro-Obama.

I think he's pissed because he's looked up to the Clintons since the 90's, and they are disappointing him in massive fashion by taking up the Karl Rove and George Bush type of politics that his whole show is dedicated to highlighting and debunking.

It's also because these sorts of things damage the party as a whole, and given what's at stake in this election, and given how little chance she has of winning, he's shocked at the megalomania of Hillary still fighting, and fighting dirty.

If it weren't for the other instances of her using this construction as an argument for her to stay in the race, and for the fact that Bill Clinton had the nomination locked up in April, not June, I would've said "what's the big deal?" myself. Instead all that shows that she really did intend to raise the specter of assassination, her only gaffe was that she used the harsher wording, still including the word "assassinated."

Saying that if Hillary had never met Bill Clinton she likely wouldn't be where she is now isn't sexist, it's obvious. Having a democratic ex-president endorse you is worth a huge boost in both the 2000 democratic senate primary in New York and the current presidential primary. It's like saying George W Bush never would have been president if his father hadn't been president (duh).

They couldn't even come up with ONE example of sexism coming from the democratic party or the Obama campaign. They just went with one thing that one independent commentator said that wasn't even sexist. Florida and Michigan were stripped of their representation at the democratic convention because they (against the rules) decided to have their primaries before super tuesday to inflate their own influence. Now I think it's a silly double standard to let Iowa and New Hampshire do it without letting other states do it, but that argument has NOTHING to do with sexism. And even if Florida and Michigan counted, Hillary would still have fewer delegates than Obama.

From the original Youtube description:

Feb 23, 1980.

In the New Hampshire primary, a single symbolic act dramatized the debut of Reagan's new image as a candidate and the demise of Bush's presidential hopes. It occurred during what was scheduled to be a two-person debate between Bush and Reagan in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Feburary 23, the Saturday before balloting. As it turned out, Bush crumpled under pressure orchestrated by Reagan's camp.

Initially, both Reagan and Bush had seen advantages in a two-person debate sponsored by a local newspaper. When the FEC ruled that newspaper sponsorship of the debate amounted to an illegal campaign contribution and when Bush refused to pay half of the debate's cost, Reagan agreed to underwrite it himself.

Reagan then moved to include the other five contenders - a move that identified him both as a candidate and a unifier. When the other candidates showed up on stage, Bush froze.

As Reagan made his case for inclusion of the other candidates, the moderator ordered Reagan's mike turned off. Reagan responded, "I'm paying for this microphone, Mr. Green." The fact that the moderator's name was Breen seemed to matter little. The crowd cheered. When neither newspaper hosting the debate nor Bush would accede to the inclusion of the others, the other candidates left the stage. Reagan's prospects had been boosted, Bush's buried. Reagan carried New Hampshire 50% to Bush's 23%.

(Excerpted from "Packaging The Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign" by Kathleen Hall Jamieson)

I think John Edwards has a far greater case of being buried by the media.

Does anyone remember that Hillary came in third in Iowa, behind both Barack Obama and John Edwards? They barely mentioned Edwards' name on the news between Iowa and New Hampshire, and totally ignored him from there on out.

The press wanted a two-way battle between Obama and Hillary from the start.

You: Too kind
for what you see in me, is merely a reflected rockstarness.
the source of which, of course, is the collective of brilliant rockstar ideas that humanity was produced so far, many of which we share, and which are far more numerous than one might've imagined only a season ago, yes? gets better. because what i think you really object to, about the things on your 'bio' list? is that you see them as needlessly polarizing. shine on, you crazy diamond. - o

In reply to this comment by Doc_M:
You: Rockstar
In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
*promote

You: Rockstar
In reply to this comment by my15minutes:
*promote

I'd peg this as having been made between New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Seems like ancient history now.

I'm a Michigander that thinks that the stripping of delegates was just. When I recently met Carl Levin, our Senator who was the main architect of the rule-breaking that Michigan did, he felt that the delegates SHOULDN'T be seated.

The entire point of the whole rule-breaking was to protest the unchanging primary calendar that gives Iowa and New Hampshire such overblown importance in deciding presidential nominees. After this primary season, Levin hoped that the Democratic National Committee would commit to a rotating calendar to give all states equal opportunity so embarrassing affairs like these wouldn't happen again.

The one thing that Levin didn't foresee was that the primary season would be so long this year, since he assumed that Iowa and New Hampshire would decide the nominee as usual. So now he looks like an idiot, but his original goal makes plenty of sense.

If Michigan's and Florida's delegates ARE seated, then it will show that the DNC is powerless and can't enforce any rules. Thus, if it tries to move back the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, the states won't have to listen. The current calendar will remain and the two states will continue to enjoy their disproportionately important roles.

Oh come on. Nader makes a huge difference, ok sure. Let's look at some numbers, shall we?

2004 Election: Nader Popular vote is 463,655 (0.38%). Seriously, if you think a third of a percent made any difference in that war, than we can talk.

Now, 2000 was a different story, but maybe not as much as you might think. Nader had 2,883,105 votes (2.73%). If ALL of Nader's supporters had voted Democrat instead of Green, Gore would have won New Hampshire and Florida. New Hampshire is only worth 4 electoral votes. Florida? Who know what really happened there....Ron Paul probably won and the vote counters had heart attacks and died.

My point here is not that 2000 would have been the same w/o Nader. My point is his support tapered off DRASTICALLY by almost 2% of all Americans. I would expect to see the same decline in 2008.

source

Tags for this video have been changed from 'will I am, Barack Obama, New Hampshire, yes we can' to 'will I am, Barack Obama, New Hampshire, yes we can, john legend' - edited by rottenseed

Here's another instance of Hillary "plagiarizing", and this one from what most view as the most effective lines of her debate performance in Austin, Texas.

Bill Clinton, New Hampshire, 1992: "The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of New Hampshire are taking every day." *

Hillary Clinton, February 21, 2008: "You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country."

Another Xerox moment, perhaps? Certainly a double standard. I don't really think this is plagiarism of course. She's simply borrowing an effective theme from Bill here. This would be perfectly acceptable were it not for her ridiculous attacks against Obama for using powerful speech lines from his friend and supporter Deval Patrick.

*Note: It appears that Bill Clinton used variations of this line in speeches in 1992 and in 1996.

Update: Exhibit A: http://www.videosift.com/video/Hillary-Clinton-plagiarizes-Bill-Clinton

>> ^jonny:

Really? So, you'd be ok with local school boards deciding that their basic science curriculum should include the alternate theory of the sun revolving around the earth?

Yes. Teachers and communities should be able to choose what they want to focus on. My experience is that if you hand a teacher a curriculum he doesn't believe in, he'll just do a half-assed job and skip to what he thinks is important.

Also, the market has ways of regulating quality and correcting bad decisions. One is criticism from outsiders. If that fails, low standardized test scores, rejection letters from colleges and job applications will make parents get the message and demand better quality.

>> ^rembar:
If you want to follow a strict constitutional viewpoint, carry it to its logical conclusion: NO state and NO government under the United States Constitution whatsoever has the right to use its power to deny teaching scientifically-accurate material to students in public schools. Decisions about teaching scientific curricula, or any other public school curricula for that matter, should be left up to the only people qualified to make such decisions, and we happen to have already hired those folks. Those people are teaching our children in public schools every day. Decisions over teaching evolution are not for the federal OR local governments to make, it's for the teachers and school officials, the people who are required to be educated on the topics they teach, to decide.

You've just made the case for the libertarian platform of limited government. Libertarians defend that the government should be shrunk down to the bare essentials because politicians are completely incapable of making competent technical decisions.

When Ron Paul says that the federal government should stay away of education, he's not implying that "states rights" will fix the problem. If you watch the New Hampshire Town Hall Q&A session (which aired along with that Fox debate RP wasn't invited to), you'll see him making the point that parents and teachers should be responsible for each child's education. Just like the federal government should delegate functions to the states, the states are expected to further delegate and keep regulation to a minimum.

I'm an engineer who took an interest in education, so after I got my pure mathmatics degree I also became a licensed math teacher. I'm completely opposed to government interference in education. To me, Brazil (my country) represents a textbook example of education central planning gone wrong. 9th grade public school kids read and write at 5th grade levels, consistently finish last in international benchmarks and each government decision actually makes things worse by providing cosmetic solutions and more regulation.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

>> ^joedirt:
You mother... How the hell is this already submitted?!<

I lurk on Reddit a bit.

... I remember Huckabee saying on a Letterman appearance clip that if he won New Hampshire it would be because he appeared on Letterman, and that if he lost it would be because he was on Letterman. So we know who can take credit for that.

Colbert and Conan are practically brothers from a different mother; I'd think it quite hard to like one and not the other, hence a feud is a great idea.