I just read a posting that NH Democrat wrote several days ago on this website.

"And for the love of God, it's not NH and Iowa that threaten the democratic process, it's the obscene front-loading, the jamming of huge numbers of primaries one after another without any time for voters to digest the results and study the candidates and reflect." ---NH Dem

I agree that front-loading has some big problems. But they are problems that are largely neutral on the subject of maintaining "the democratic process" as you put it. (Rich contributors have more say; they always do, which is a problem, though that's mitigated by the recent trend toward internet donatations by average folk.) But we still have one person, one vote. Every vote counts equally, whether you have 2 early primaries or 6.

In contrast, nothing could be less democratic than having an entirely unrepresentative group of rural - almost exclusively caucasian - voters from IA and NH act as kingmakers for the rest of the party and country. Why should a handful of rural white Democrats hold class A shares in a stock - the Democratic party - that count for ten times the vote of urban people of color who hold class B shares in the back of the bus?!

The arrogance of those who feel entitled to maintain IA and NH's all-white country club status of privilege within the Democratic primaries is stunning and offensive.

If it claims to speak for all Americans, the Democratic Party really needs to replace IA and NH with two other, far more representative small states that actually affirm, rather than actively undermine, the notion of one person, one vote: NM and HI.

I think that the biggest part of this story is that Hynes has a history of attacking others that blogged and consulted at the same time, even if they disclosed the relationship. Total hypocrite that should be publically disgraced.

Three questions:

Who are these two or three "Condi is the Second Coming....bow down before the awesomeness that is Condi" zombies that spam their adulation of The Spike-Heeled One across the comments of political sites with all the deftness and credibility of an unshaven cross-dressing Jehovah's Witness pounding on your door at six in the morning?

How many drug laws are they breaking?

And what will it take to make them go away?

Peter, sorry, go back to Monday's newspapers, and no one expected the State Department jet (decked out like Air Force One) to land and for Condi to tell the reporters on board they will be going to Beirut. That was A BIG NEWS ITEM, and she met with the Speaker of Parliment of Lebanon, (a Hezbollah sympathizer), and she also met with the Cedar Revolutionary leaders who revolted after the murder of former PM Hariri for speaking against Hezbollah.

Yes, Peter, she is a better Secretary of State than National Security Adviser. At least she does not try to rip the red carpet out from under the President's feet like Colin Powell did during his term. I guess the reason the media loved Powell was that he would speak against the President, so with Condi as loyal team member, they seem to try to be undermining her.

Rudy's minimal showing in Tennessee was no surprise. Not his crowd.

I wouldn't call Condi's visit to Beirut a "surprise." The press had been talking about it for a week. I think she's made a better Secretary of State than she did the National Security Advisor, but if she even decides to run, she'll have to answer a lot of questions about her work as the latter.

McCain is polarizing among Republicans maybe, but they never fail to shore up their base come election time.

More Republican "Straight Talk". Can we lose the infatuation with McCain, now that he is shown to be "just another lying Republican" running for president?

Fox News just reported that Sen. Maria Cantwell hired one of her opponents in the Dem primary, and it paying the guy $8000 a month to be on her team. Blogger, political opponent, religious naysayer; just buy them off to get rid of them. Sounds nice when you have millions in your war chest. McCain might think he is outsmarting Republicans, but he is has just reduced himself to the level of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. Funny how McCain is willing to lay down in the mud.

Does anyone even know what McCain stands for anymore?

Noone believes John McCain anymore, and his support even among fiscal conservatives is pretty much gone after the kowtowing he did to the radical extremists who want to export stem cell research jobs to the EU (which they were very happy to get, along with all those highly educated scientists).

Hynes criticized Moulitsas for working for Howard Dean while continuing to blog, despite the front-page disclosure on Dailykos...and now didn't disclose he was working for McCain while writing positive posts about him.

Now there's some straight talk for ya!

Hey Peter, I was in Memphis at that Straw Poll where McCain operatives handed out the Bush Write-In cards to boost support for the President. The other write-in candidate was Condi Rice for 2008, and she got more than Rudy (who was on the ballot).

The latest Gallup poll shows three candidates are acceptable for the Republican party:
Rudy 73%
Condi 68%
McCain 55%

The UN-acceptable part is also interesting, according to Gallup:
Rudy 23%
Condi 29%
McCain 41%

The Republican party is clearly discussing and watching the poll numbers for 2008, and with Condi at a job approval rating of 65%, she is a Rising Star on the political stage.

McCain is polarizing, and if the movers and shakers of the Republican party fail to clean off his anti-religious problems from 2000, he will remain polarizing.

Right now, Condi is starting "shuttle diplomacy" and it started on Monday with her surprise visit to Beirut. Today, Thursday July 27, the talk of the release of the abducted Israeli soldier is being discussed on CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. Condi influenced that discussion, but it might be too much bother for the media to think of giving Condi any credit of this deal if it becomes reality. The media would rather call her a failure on the diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. (Yes, I am distrustful of the media giving us the real facts.) I hope the Washington Post reporters give Condi some praise about this brokerage of the deal.

McCain supported Bush in that straw poll because he wanted to dilute the results; he knew he would not come out on top among evangelical voters in Tennessee, so by rallying purely symbolic votes for Bush, he both made nice with Bush apologists and made sure that, as long as he wasn't going to win, the poll was as meaningless as possible.

Paying people to blog, directly or indirectly, regardless of disclosure, seems like the phoniest thing in the world to me. It's on par with the "news" articles candidates post on their websites pretending to be arbitrary parties while writing flattering things about themselves. The only difference is people will believe this stuff.

Well, if he were to be honest, Hynes would track down all the old posts he wrote about the accusations against Kos some time ago.

McCain, a Senator I once admired, and looked forward to supporting as a candidate, has degenerated into a mini-Bush panderer, always just a half-step behind Bush in full pucker. McCain even voted this spring for lame-duck Bush in a presidential straw poll.

Hard to believe after the Rove-trademark smear and tarring McCain took in 2000. He is obviously trying to snag Bush's base.... he even made-nice with "Winky-Dinky is gay" Falwell.

Now the undisclosed paid political action blogger. What's next, Tom DeLay as his campaign manager? Makes me think we never really knew him after all.

http://whathappenedtomycountry.blogspot.com

Why a man who would endure the hardships of
prison for several years,would suddenly developed such a yearning for the office of
the president, that he would give up all he has "stood for!" - His moral positioning
was, apparently, nothing more than pure political bull-s.

Thanks for nothing Mr. Deceitful !

Anyone else find it ironic that the PAC is named "Straight Talk"...? I find that very ironic.

Boo McCain and your sleezy manipulation.

Would anybody expect any less from the GOP (or the Republican blogosphere for that matter)? Doesn't surprise me in the least that McCain is just as ethically bankrupt as pretty much everyone else in the GOP.

Yet another in a series of disappointments concerning John McCain, my candidate for president in 2000. I feel so disillusioned.

"He is not the first blogger to go to bat for a candidate without disclosing that he was on the payroll, but that doesn't make the practice any less questionable."

Oddly, the only people who seem to do it without disclosing it are Republican bloggers, so far as I recall -- this guy and the Thune bloggers. Moulitsas and Armstrong always disclosed everything up front.

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