A year out, oh please, fucking spare me..

[Gob]

US President Barack Obama has launched his reelection campaign with a social media barrage, turning once again to the online tools that helped propel him to the White House three years ago.

Obama, 49, announced his 2012 candidacy with a message on Twitter, a status update on his Facebook page and an email blast to his millions of supporters, all of which provided a link to his BarackObama.com campaign website.

"Today, we're filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign," the Democrat told the 7.28 million followers of the @barackobama account on Twitter.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno ... 1czwu.html

A whole fucking year of the dog and pony show which will be the next US election?

Fuck me pink...

[dgs49]

One can only hope that the American voting public can remember the adage,

"Fool me once...

[rubato]

"...

A whole fucking year of the dog and pony show which will be the next US election?

Fuck me pink...

Its like the gambling industry. It produces nothing of real value by itself and feels morally unwholesome but a lot of people make a living at it.

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

One can only hope that the American voting public can remember the adage,

"Fool me once...

...and not be hoodwinked again into voting Republican.

[quaddriver]

What are you complaining about? You dont have to listen to it.

[Lord Jim]

You know, I have to say that I get a little tired of all the tut tuting from my Euro friends about the length of our Presidential campaigns....

The fact of the matter is that your campaigns begin the day after the conclusion of the last campaign just like ours do; you just structure it differently.

This idea that campaigns are actually only 90 days long in the UK and Australia is, as a practical matter, utter rubbish. Your parties have already picked your candidates for the next election (hell, you guys even pick your potential cabinet officers years in advance) within days of the conclusion of the previous election, and the "campaign" in a real sense begins right then and there....

Of course every now and then the candidate presumptive for head of government who's chosen three, four, five, years in advance, (nobody knows for sure, since your elections aren't held at regular intervals....could be two weeks since the previous election if the conditions dictate it...your elections are generally held when the party in power thinks conditions are optimum for their re-election....unless they've made such a cock up of things that no such time exists within the legal limit that they are required to hold a new election ) gets sacked by an internal party coup that the electorate had no involvement with....

So, you know where you can shove your condescending attitude about the supposed "superiority" of your electoral system

[Sue U]

So, you know where you can shove your condescending attitude about the supposed "superiority" of your electoral system

Yeah, but they can spend more time doing their pandering in Parliament, where it has a slim chance of resulting in some governmental action, rather than just gassing on the campaign trail.

[BoSoxGal]

One can only hope that the American voting public can remember the adage,

"Fool me once...

...and not be hoodwinked again into voting Republican.

[Lord Jim]

An aside to Sue...

This ought to make you happy....

As convinced as I am that Sarah Palin has no intention of running for President, I am equally convinced at this point that your other girlfriend, Michelle Bachmann, is running. She just hired Mike Huckabee's 2008 chief Iowa campaign organizer and you don't do that unless you really intend to run. She's also been raising a lot of money.

However, I'm also convinced that she has a much chance of getting the nomination as Charlie Sheen....

[Lord Jim]

Personally, in my opinion, the more Michelle Bachmann type candidates we have entering the race for the party's nomination, the better. The more candidates we have splitting up the "no compromises ever" politically suicidal vote in the party, the better the chances are that someone like Mitch Daniels, who could actually attract enough moderate independent voters to win the election, will get nominated.

[Sue U]

Trump/Bachmann/Sheen 2012!

(Sorry about Palin. I agree she won't run, because 1) she won't give up the teevee money and b) she won't do anything that's not all about her. Too bad, would have been hi-larious. But there's still plenty of wingnuttery left! The GOP primaries are shaping up to be AWESOME!11!!1!!)

[quaddriver]

Trump/Bachmann/Sheen 2012!

(Sorry about Palin. I agree she won't run, because 1) she won't give up the teevee money and b) she won't do anything that's not all about her. Too bad, would have been hi-larious. But there's still plenty of wingnuttery left! The GOP primaries are shaping up to be AWESOME!11!!1!!)

Charlie Sheen Beats Obama, Palin In Presidential Poll

uh oh

[Gob]

Well Jim, it's hard not to condescend when you're just so superior!

But really if you cannot appreciate that (from and outsiders perspective) the US's presidential election appears to be nothing more than "American Idol" on steroids, during which billions of dollars are spent, thousands of man hours wasted, and fills the airwaves with the sort of sensational irrelevancy of "Obama's Birth certificate," and can still end up with the certifiable moron Bush II elected TWICE, or the sort of hamstrung, limping along to oblivion, current presidency, then that's not my problem.

You are of course welcome to criticise the UK and Aus systems for their brevity, outcomes, and seriousness if it pleases you.

[The Hen]

You are of course welcome to criticise the UK and Aus systems for their brevity, outcomes, and seriousness if it pleases you.

Please try and do it in two sentences ot less. As an Aussie, if something takes too long I just don't bother.





All smart arsed comments about my love life can be canned btw.

[Lord Jim]

The money is one major reason Palin won't run, the other is she knows that if she tried to get the nomination she'd get her ass kicked, and that would greatly diminish her "mystique" with her fans....

I agree with Lawrence O'Donnell, (now there's a phrase I don't write very frequently) that she'll act like she's going to run right up to the moment that she has to actually jump in and then not pull the trigger...The way he put it was that "she's running for billionaire"...I agree...

Bachmann on the other hand, though she's achieved some notoriety (particularly with hard right activists and hard left media pundits) isn't yet at the level of media phenom that Palin enjoys, so she wouldn't be hurt by a losing nomination campaign. In fact her profile and bankability will probably go up....(Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul would just be a couple of obscure crackpot Congressmen if not for their Presidential runs. Instead, they're a pair of well known crackpot Congressmen, which is great for personal appearance fees and book sales.)

Trump I really can't figure out. I was sure he wasn't really going to run, that he was only going through this for the publicity and ego gratification, but I do have to say he seems to be taking it further than he has on previous occasions....

I'll say this though...

If he does decide to run, better that he run in the GOP primaries, (where he is certain to lose) than as a third party candidate where, (if he's really serious about spending 600 million bucks) he could probably get on every ballot and take 3-4% of the vote, every percentage point of which would come straight out of the GOP candidate's total. (though he might pick up some of the younger male voters who voted for Obama last time around...they might find his faux macho shtick and his penchant for saying and doing outrageous things appealing...)

[Scooter]

Trump I really can't figure out. I was sure he wasn't really going to run, that he was only going through this for the publicity and ego gratification, but I do have to say he seems to be taking it further than he has on previous occasions....

What I don't get is why he decided to jump on the birther bandwagon. It makes him look like one of those rich crackpots who end up leaving their entire fortune to their cat.

[dales]

"Sticker shock" for Obama's pricey April SF fundraiser -- $35,800 PER PERSON?

Even loyal Obama supporters are raising their eyebrows at the very pricey fundraising -- like that exclusive $35,800-per-person dinner in San Francisco -- planned as part of the President's April 20 visit to the Bay Area.

The April Western U.S. swing by the President, which includes a stop in Reno and Los Angeles as well as San Francisco, is part of Obama's 2012 re-election kickoff campaign. But also scheduled is what the White House promises will be a jobs and economy event in the Bay Area on April 20.

On April 21, Obama heads to Los Angeles.

Obama supporters acknowledge that the $35,800 per person San Francisco Obama Victory Fund dinner may represent a new pricetag high for political fundraising. After all, loyal Dems thought the ceiling was reached last Oct. 21, when tickets to that Obama dinner in the Palo Alto home of Google executive Marissa Mayer hit an astonishing $30,800 per person.

Yes, "there's a little bit of sticker shock,'' one Dem told us this week. The explanation: $30,800 of that donation will go to the Democratic National Committee, with $5,000 going to the Obama campaign -- $2,500 for the primary and $2,500 for the general election.

Here's the details of the Obama fundraising schedule as we know them so far:

*On April 20, organizers are promising a "low dollar" event at Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco, with tickets priced at $25, $250, $1,000 and $2,500. The high end ticket, $2,500, gets a donor a spot in the first three rows of the venue -- along with a photo line shot, according to the emails we've seen.

*April 20th evening: Obama will star at a very exclusive dinner at the San Francisco home of Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. That will allow just 60 high end supporters to dine with the President; potential donors are being told that Obama will "go to each table and speak with everyone individually,'' with photographer in tow for that $35,800 check. ("Yes, you read that correctly,'' another astonished potential check-writer told us.)

*April 21st: Breakfast at 7:30 at St. Regis Hotel in Los Angeles for an estimated 120 people. Tickets are $5,000 or $10,000, and that top VIP price gets you a photo with the President.

And this is just the beginning for California's deep-pocketed donors: remember, it's still 19 months until the 2012 election.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov ... z3EzauTlJg

[Scooter]

Is it legal? If so, what's the problem?

Charities engage in this kind of fundraising all the time - you stratify your donor base and target different fundraising opportunities to them based on their willingness/ability to pay. If there are folks that are willing to donate $35,000 it would be stupid to structure events so that the maximum donation is $1,000.

[dgs49]

To Gob's point, we DO spend entirely too much time and money on this nonsense, and in the end the winner is usually decided by factors other than competence and a coherent, well considered platform.

Also, consider that in 2008 neither the Democrat nor the Republican candidate would have won their party's primary election if it had been a nation-wide, popular vote. The arcane, drawn-out primary/caucus process produced a couple of bad candidates, and an election in which "None of the Above" would have won in a landslide, were it an option in November.

More important, we have a President with more than enough on his plate, who will, for the next two years be distracted from performing his Constitutional functions by the demands of an arcane, preposterous electoral process.

I do not begrudge him the Billion dollars or so that he and his minions will spend to get him re-elected - which he surely will be. Regardless, he will be "working with" a strongly Republican Congress who will prevent him from implementing the Euro-Socialist government that he so fervently desires.

Ironically, his campaign spending will probably constitute his only real success at creating jobs during his first term.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Please try and do it in two sentences ot less. As an Aussie, if something takes too long I just don't bother.

All smart arsed comments about my love life can be canned btw.

Oh... er... any reason you put that in such a small font? And so briefly too.....