Who then?

Dgsguy — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:06:01 -0700

If both of them are playing games then who gets the nod? If you look at websites for the other three candidates Palmer and Ferris have excellent ideas. O'Grady and Ferris have strong backgrounds. I have yet to see or hear anything about O'Grady except for brief mentions by the Pee Dee. I heard Ferris on the radio the other day and at this point I am leaning towards one of the ladies.

They should call him

AmberCat — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:10:27 -0700

the Lawsuit Legislator. Don't forget the stink he's been making about the New Hampshire primary being unfair or messed up or rigged or something or another. He may have a point in that case, it's too soon to tell. But if he does, he's diminished its credibility by flinging lawsuits, investigations and complaints in every which direction. I wish he had left this one alone because as you point out, Cimperman looks silly pulling these kinds of stunts as a big downtown advocate who doesn't live in or represent the tenth district. He's an outsider, a carpetbagger, with little room to be presenting Dennis with maps of the district. If Dennis's staff wanted to defang Cimperman, they'd focus on THAT, not on these far-fetched claims.

Some thoughts on the Kucinich-Cimperman fiasco...

modernesquire — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:14:52 -0700

People sometimes wonder why I'm so anti-Dennis Kucinich. Despite what some may think, it's not because I disagree with him on the issues (on many issues I actually agree with him, to an extent.) No, it's because I find him to be a hypocrite and have some of the worst characteristics of politicians.

His sudden switch from an adament and reliable pro-life Democrat to a pro-choice Democrat before his first presidential run is a bit too Mitt Romney for me.

And as a potential President, I don't see him being any better than a left-wing version of Bush. Like our current President, Kucinich is myopic, viewing his entire political environment through unbending and narrow ideological blinders. He openly drips with disdain of any institution, organization, or person who dares disagree with his world view. He sees compromise as a cancer of democracy, not a healthy and necessary act. He refuses to compromise and expects to dictate his terms and have the world follow.

And then there's the hypocracy and the lying. Despite claiming that he is the only politician who represents the interest of "the people," he has shown no remorse for lying to his constitutents during his recent re-election when he told them he would focus on the needs of his district and explicitly promised not to run for President only to announce his presidential campaign a month after securing his re-election. At least nobody has died from Kucinich's lie, but then again perhaps anyone who believed either politicians lie deserves to be deceived as their true motives could not have been more transparent.

And then there was last week. Pissed because he was disinvited from MSNBC's Nevada presidential debates, Kucinich filed legal action after legal action calling it an affront to democracy to exclude him (and, apparently, only him as he never stood to the defense of Senator Gravel, the other candidate excluded from the debate.) Instead of accepting the rational explanation that he is simply not a viable candidate, not because MSNBC says so, but because so far the entire Democratic electorate who have yet to award him a single delegate to our party's convention and no signs that he is expected to be a factor in the race at all, but because of some ridiculous military-industrial complex conspiracy theory that it has something to do with GE's corporate ownership of the network. Never mind that until voters started voting, MSNBC and other "corporate networks" included him in countless debates.

And now, as further evidence as why Dennis Kucinich cannot be trusted with the powers of the Presidency, is the ham-handed response to one of his primary opponent's publicity stunts at one of his congressional offices. Councilman Cimperman's publicity stunt was juvenile, and frankly, diminished him as a serious contender. The only saving grace for his rather silly stunt is the over-reaction and misuse of government resources by Kucinich.

Supposedly, Kucinich's office complained because the taping would interefer with the privacy of his constituents to seek his assistance. The most obvious problem with that is that the video shows no constituents present in the office during the taping. Second, doesn't this sound familiar? Is it really any different than the various variations by this Administration as to why it shouldn't have to disclose things like who's met in the White House to talk policy?

And third, it's completely untrue. A congressional office's calendar is a public record. The public has every right to know who a Congressional office is meeting with. Any letter his office sends on behalf of a constitutent? Well, it's a public record for his office and whatever public office the letter is sent. With the exception of Social Security numbers and medical records, congressional caseworker files are a public record. There is an attorney-client privilege, but there is no such thing as a Congressperson-constituent confidential relationship.

Kucinich's use of the Federal Protective Services to "investigate" Cimperman's political stunt was downright Nixonian. After all, what would D.K. say if the White House sent the Secret Service after him after he delivered some peace petition to the White House? He'd say that it was an unconstitutional abuse of government power designed to intimidate and chill his constitutionally guaranteed right of free political speech. And he'd be right.

Cimperman's act was a blatant stunt designed for no other purpose than to generate publicity for his political campaign. And yet, while that fact may have made it politically dumb to do, the fact is that politicially dumb speech is the most constitutional protected form of speech there is. And to actually try to chill the free exercise of constitutionally protected political speech by having government flex its powers against an individual due to that speech activity is actual censorship, not what Dennis Kucinich was trying to convince anyone who would listen was what MSNBC was doing.

The biggest problem with Dennis Kucinich is that he has deluded himself to think that he is not part of the system. That when he talks about government, it's something other than him. In this incident, he forgot that he is a public official and Councilman Cimperman (in an over-the-top-juvenile way) has a right to petition him over his perceived lack of attention to the needs of his constitutents, even if Cimperman's motives were politically selfish.

On one hand, though, I can't blame Cimperman for his antics. Given Kucinich's utter disregard for the right of others to debate him, Cimperman realized that between showing up for the occasional Congressional roll call vote, campaigning for President no matter what, and all his court appearances whenever he is excluded from anything, Dennis Kucinich will have no time to debate the second office he is running for. This may have been the only way for Cimperman to square off with Kucinich.

I wonder if Kucinich would lend Cimperman and Palmer his lawyer's business card...

Buckeye State Blog - Some thoughts on the Kucinich-Cimperman fiasco... - Comments

Who then?

They should call him

Some thoughts on the Kucinich-Cimperman fiasco...